


A Moment in the Sun

by prufrockslove



Series: The AUs [3]
Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 05:56:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 248,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14909652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prufrockslove/pseuds/prufrockslove
Summary: Autumn in New York, 1953. A legendary baseball player past his prime and a beautiful woman with a secret.





	1. 5

TITLE: A Moment in the Sun

AUTHOR: prufrock's love

GENRE: AU, Pre-X-files

RATING: R

ARCHIVE: Gossamer & AO3 only

DISCLIAMER: FOX Network owns The X-Files. No copyright infringement is intended and no money is being made from the use of these characters.

SUMMARY: Autumn in New York, 1953. A legendary baseball player past his prime and a beautiful woman with a secret.

 

*~*~*~*

 

For immediate release:

New York, New York (October 7, 1953) Following a stellar baseball career with the New York Yankees, Fox Mulder confirms rumors he will not return for a twelfth season in the sun. Mulder, the Yankees’ longtime center fielder and three-time MVP winner, holds the longest base-hitting streak in Major League history: 56-games during the 1941 season. He is a nine-time World Series winner, and regarded as a living legend of the game. Known for being a private and dedicated family man off the field, Mulder is also a decorated World War II veteran who served in the D-Day landing and later in the liberation of Germany. Though plagued by knee injuries, he finished this season by hitting the game-winning homerun to the delight of the cheering crowd. He looks forward to spending time with his family.

 

*~*~*~*

 

America remembered 1953 as an era of innocence and conformity – too idyllic to be true. After the lean times of the Great Depression and the horror of World War II, a healing nation took comfort in family and normalcy. Women left their war-time jobs and returned to their traditional roles of wife and mother. Prosperous couples abandoned the cities for manicured suburban homes. Baseball remained a national past-time, bordering on a religion. Sixty-eight percent of households with a television set tuned in to watch Lucille Ball have her baby on “I Love Lucy,” but no gentleman used the word 'pregnant' in mixed company. Elvis Presley still drove a truck in Mississippi, and Ray Charles and James Brown remained unknown outside the Chitlin' Circuit. “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller opened on Broadway. Dean Martin, Doris Day, and Bing Crosby topped the charts. In England, the young Queen Elizabeth II ascended the throne, and sugar - rationed since 1942 - became freely available.

 

It was a rigidly moral time, as well. Marriage was sacred, and divorce rare and socially unacceptable. Illegitimacy bordered on leprosy. An unremarkable movie entitled “The Moon is Blue” shocked the public by mentioning the words ‘virgin,’ ‘seduce,’ and ‘mistress;’ Boston banned the film. Human nature changed little in private, though; about 50% of women had premarital relations, according to Kinsey's landmark study on human sexual behavior - but most with their intended husband.

 

Patriotism reigned and the evil Soviet menace lurked in the shadows. The House Committee on Un-American Activities held hearings to sluice out communists in Hollywood and the US government. Families built bomb shelters in their backyards, certain of imminent nuclear war. Ethel and Julius Rosenburg went to the electric chair as Russian spies. In 1947, an unidentified object crash-landed in New Mexico, and got reported as a weather balloon. As more and more mysterious saucers were observed, the CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel met to discuss UFO's. At the end of World War II, classified government projects brought Nazi and Japanese scientists to the United States to continue their wartime medical research. Administration of LSD was quietly approved in the MKULTRA mind control project. Hillary and Norgay reached the summit of Mt. Everest; Watson and Crick discovered DNA. 58,000 people contracted polio, but a vaccine was in the works. Science promised salvation.

 

People knew who they were - or at least, who they should be - and they trusted their god and their government. Anything deviant from that ideal was disposed of like a used razorblade into the mysterious slot in the medicine cabinet: a hole leading nowhere. Unwanted things got slipped through; they disappeared, and no one thought to ask their destination. In truth, hundreds of rusting razor blades piled up inside bathroom walls, Big Brother watched, and mankind was far from alone in the universe. But out of sight was out of mind. The world had a simple, set, noble, naïve order.

 

And in the autumn of 1953, in New York City, a legendary baseball player past his prime met a beautiful young woman with a secret.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder physically embodied of the American dream; The New York Times said so in print less than a month ago. Fox Mulder was tall and slim, with long limbs and dark hair tousled not matter how short the barber cut it. His father’s sharp German facial features blended handsomely with his mother’s Jewish ones. He had a broad, full mouth and sleepy hazel eyes that sparkled when he was amused. He knew the beauty of the world, but had also met pure evil face-to-face. A wealthy man, he liked to be comfortable: expensive suits, nice cars, good liquor, and soft beds. He thought deeply and a great deal, but said little, afraid of stuttering or looking foolish. Society didn't expect baseball players to be bright or well-educated, so he watched people, mostly - an observer of society rather than a full participant. But sixty-thousand people cheered as he hit a last homerun and took his final lap around the bases. That afternoon, Fox Mulder was genetic superiority and preternatural skill and triumph over adversity and poetry in motion, according to the Associated Press and a good dose of Melvin Frohike chutzpah.

 

Mulder’s career ended, the lights dimmed, and night fell. By All Hallows Eve 1953, the American dream felt so hollow it echoed.

 

Mulder shifted the icepack. He found a colder, dryer spot, and pressed it against his forehead. The swollen gash above his eye ached, but a dull pain pulsed throughout his head. Twelve hours had passed since his last drink. ‘Du sollst der werden, der du bist,’ Nietzsche wrote. A man becomes the person he truly is. Mulder’s father had loved to quote Nietzsche.

 

Mulder sat on the edge of the examination table and waited. And waited. His feet dangled and his crumpled dress shirt and tie lay on his lap, both spattered with blood. He wore a bloodstained T-shirt, gray flannel suit trousers, and polished wingtip shoes. The dark hair on his forearms bristled in the cold room. He starred dully at the floor tiles as the overhead light glared down at him.

 

The man on the next examination table lurched up and pushed a nurse aside. He knocked over a metal tray. Stainless steel instruments scattered, clattering loudly across the floor. Another nurse came running as the doctor passed the man a basin. The man leaned over and emptied the contents of his stomach into the basin. Across the room, another man roused drunkenly and beginning yelling at no one in particular.

 

Mulder reconsidered seeking out medical treatment. An hour ago, it seemed necessary, but perhaps he could continue to bleed.

 

After his father died, Mulder’s after-dinner Scotch sometimes became three or four Scotches over an evening, if his son wasn't around. William spent the summer in England with Mulder’s ex-wife, so Mulder’s solo cocktail hour slipped to earlier in the day and continued until the early morning. It was 1953; everyone drank. Mulder never drank on game days, though - not before the game. By August, his stomach started to complain and his doctor to lecture, but Mulder ignored both. He was a big boy, and as long as he wasn’t drunk during games or in front of Will, he was fine. The games stopped and the days started to blur together. Mulder hadn't been sober in a week, but this afternoon, he woke next to a pretty woman he didn't remember taking to bed. Mulder’s teenage son had stood in the bedroom doorway with his book bag over his shoulder, staring at the bed.

 

The drunk tried to leave, and had a long, incoherent argument with the nurse blocking his way.

 

Mulder exhaled a long breath. 'Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich starker,' Nietzche also wrote. What did not destroy him made him stronger.

 

The weathered doctor shook his head at Mulder in apology and nodded to the second nurse. Small, white shoes entered Mulder’s field of vision. A warm hand touched his arm, and a young woman's voice said, "Come with me please sir, and I'll get you fixed up."

 

Mulder slid off the table and carefully to his feet. He kept the ice pack against his head and between him and the light, and followed the nurse to an adjacent room. "Is that a promise?" he asked half-heartedly. 

 

She gestured to the low steel stool in the center of the little room. "I can't guarantee perfection." She answered with her back to him as she rooted through a series of metal drawers.

 

"I wasn't perfect to begin with," Mulder admitted.

 

"Then you should be fine." She faced him with the corners of her mouth turned up and her lips pursed. At one AM, her blue eyes twinkled, and his head ached less.

 

Mulder exhaled again and rolled his shoulders back as he looked up at her. He lowered the ice pack and tucked the toes of his shoes behind two of the stool's legs. She put a hand on his chin, tilting his head toward the light. He tried not to wince.

 

"The doctor looked at your X-rays, and the damage is all superficial." The nurse wiped off his forehead. "It looks worse than it is."

 

"I-I'd like that in writing," he requested, stuttering.

 

The young nurse looked at him, seeming tolerantly amused. "No guarantees."

 

He chuckled softly even though it hurt. She inhaled and - in case she could still smell alcohol - he made sure to breathe through his nose.

 

He watched warily as she readied everything, flicking the syringe with her finger to get the bubbles out. In the other room, the drunk yelled again.

 

"There are meetings, aren't there?" Mulder asked, breaking the tense silence. "For alcoholics?"

 

"AA. Alcoholics Anonymous."

 

"How do you find them if they're anonymous?" he said casually.

 

"We have a schedule at the desk."

 

He nodded without comment.

 

"You’ll feel a prick. I’ll numb your forehead and I can put the stitches in. Come back here, big guy." 

 

He hadn't realized he leaned away from her, eyeing the needle, until a warm hand took him by the shoulder and guided him back under the light. Mulder found himself eye-level with her breasts. Nice breasts, which he made a polite effort not to stare at. This room was cold as well, and she wore a white cardigan sweater which covered part of the name tag on her chest. She was 'Nur'. Apparently, he still didn’t stay where she placed him, because the nurse kept a firm grip on his chin while she cleaned the gash one-handed.

 

"So tell me, patient to nurse, what happened to you, Mr. Martin." She seemed trying to distract him from the miniature meat hook she prepared to jab into his flesh. "This looks like a blunt trauma rather than- What was your cover story"

 

The doctor had addressed Mulder as ‘sir,’ not by name. Mulder couldn't tell if this nurse was joking or if she didn't recognize him. "Slipped on some ice," he said. "I'm not very creative, but my head was bleeding and I-I thought that was a good story."

 

He’d stuttered again. Mulder swallowed and exhaled.

 

She tossed a few used pieces of gauze in the waste bin. The pretty nurse shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She picked up the first suture. "Close your eyes, sir."

 

He did, gladly.

 

"First, unless you work in a meat locker or the fish market, there is no ice in New York today. The muscle definition in your shoulders speaks to athleticism or physical labor, but you’re wearing an expensive wristwatch for a butcher or a fisherman, Mr. Martin."

 

"It was my fathers," he said truthfully.

 

"Probably not his custom-made Savile Row shirt, though."

 

Mulder opened his eyes, impressed.

 

"It's on the label." She nodded to the bloody shirt on his lap. "Henry Poole & Co. 15 Savile Row, London."

 

He smiled and closed his eyes again. She stood so close that he felt the warmth from her body. He sensed something else, though. The soreness in her feet and the tired ache of her shoulders.

 

"Second," she continued, "people fall back if they slip, or they have marks on their forearms where they catch themselves if they fall forward.  This was a-" She paused to readjust his head; without his homing breast, he drifted again. "A pipe? A pool cue? I'm going to need a clue, but my money’s on some sort of club."

 

"I'll have to swear you to secrecy."

 

"I’ll swear not to tell a soul if you swear to hold still, Mr. Martin."

 

"Agreed." He looked up at her briefly, and closed his eyes again as he admitted, "My son hit me with a baseball bat. Accidentally. We were at the ballpark after dinner and I was trying to teach him to swing through. He swung hard, let go of the bat, and the bat cracked me in the head. I waited for it to stop bleeding on its own, but it didn't, so I thought I should get it checked out before I drove home. Before I drove him to his mother's apartment," Mulder said for clarity, in case she cared. "I left my son in the waiting room looking remorseful and uncoordinated, yet still convinced this is all my fault."

 

"What's shameful about a batting accident?"

 

"With my son, I like to keep things quiet. Out of the papers, especially. He didn't choose what his father does for a living." He added, "I wish his life was easier."

 

The ice in the ice pack melted slowly. It began to drip onto his trouser leg and, drop by drop, to the turquoise-tiled floor.

 

She moved away, and he heard her pull the string to open a Band-Aid as she said, "That's understandable. Still, I don't think it necessitates such a conspiracy. But that's it, Mr. Martin," she pronounced. "All done. You can open your eyes, sir."

 

He opened his eyes and blinked a few times.

 

"See? The world didn't end."

 

Liking what he saw - her concerned face close to his - he smiled. The nurse smiled but looked away self-consciously. She ran her thumb over the bandage to smooth it into place, paused to admire her handiwork without making eye contact, and picked up his chart to make notes. Her left hand lacked a wedding band, as did his.

 

"You get the same bill, regardless of whether the doctor or the nurse sews. You can pay as you leave if you don't want to give a billing address."

 

"May I get a telephone number to call?"

 

"For the billing department?" She glanced up as she wrote.

 

"No, I'll pay my bill as I leave." He grinned again.

 

She stopped writing and looked at him, her pen poised a few inches above the chart. "No," she said gently.

 

"Too far from perfect to begin with?" he guessed.

 

She smiled politely but didn't answer.

 

"You honestly don't know who I am, do you?" he asked, but wanted to snatch his words back.

 

"I know you say you're Mr. Marty Martin. That's a bad alias, by the way. Injured in- Do you want to have been mugged or won a bar brawl?"

 

"Oh, won a bar brawl. Against ten men. I am Superman.” He swallowed again. “Mu-may I get dressed?"

 

She nodded as she wrote. "Keep the wound dry, ice it to keep the swelling down, and come back to get the stitches out in ten days. If you start to get dizzy or confused or the wound looks infected, come back."

 

"I don't live in the Bronx." He shrugged on his bloody shirt. "What about my doctor?"

 

"Anyone can take the stitches out. It was nice doing business with you, Mr. Not-Really-Martin."

 

"Thank you, Nurse-"

 

"Scully. Nurse Scully," she answered, and started to walk out of the room. She added crisply, "Or you could come back once you've healed and let me take a look at you."

 

She was right; the world hadn't ended.

 

"I could do that," he promised. "Then I get your telephone number?"

 

"Then I take your stitches out," she said. "No guarantees."

 

A memory flickered in the perimeter of his mind: a recognition. He had a good memory for people. Numbers. Pretty much anything.

 

"No guarantees," he agreed. "Nurse Dana Scully."

 

She looked at him oddly as she left. Mulder fastened the top button of his bloody shirt. His legs remained intertwined with the legs of the steel stool but he noticed the room had warmed considerably.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Nurse Scully sat alone at the desk, wearing the same cardigan sweater over her white uniform, with a stack of charts at one elbow and a cup of coffee, a half-eaten sandwich, and an apple at the other. She didn’t look up as she wrote in a chart.

 

Mulder stopped in the rear doorway of the otherwise empty triage room, winter coat draped over one arm and his hat in his hand, taking stock.

 

She was a registered nurse, so at least twenty-two years old. Her manner suggested several years of experience as a trauma nurse, though. Now, as well as the last time he saw her, she wore little makeup, and she hadn't worn perfume. She was intelligent, precise, and methodical in her manner. She took pride in being professional, and cared about the patients she cared for. She drank her coffee with real cream - little luxuries were important to her. A small gold cross hung from a chain around her neck, and Mercy was a Catholic hospital. Under her nurse's cap, she had her hair pulled up neatly, but not 'done' in the beauty parlor sense. Her nails were the same way: clean and functional. Her hair looked greenish-brown to him, but he guessed from her complexion it was dark auburn.

 

She had been an Army nurse, Mulder suspected. She finished college and joined the Nurse Corps to serve her country. Her brothers were servicemen as well - perhaps career military – like her father and grandfather. One of them, or a husband or fiancé, died shortly before she joined the Army, which precipitated her decision. She came from a working class Irish-Catholic family. She paid her bills on time, bought well-made clothes on sale, and went to confession at the same church at the same time each week. She worked nights to be home during the day, and something or someone occupied a great deal of her free time. She'd been a widow long enough she no longer wore her wedding ring, so Mulder bet it a child. Her husband had been a doctor in Korea, but killed, leaving her with an infant. If Mulder surmised correctly, her child couldn’t be older than five.

 

Nurse Scully said, "Mr. Martin," as she glanced up from her stack of charts. She stood and walked around the desk. "Is something wrong?"

 

He noticed again how petite she was, even with her white shoes adding a few inches. Mulder could have rested his chin on top of her head, and he had the urge to. He didn't, of course. He shifted his hat to his other hand and answered, "No," trying to sound casual.

 

"Are you having complications?"

 

"With my head? No. With my life?" He answered by shrugging one shoulder and gave her a lazy, self-deprecating grin. That was good, he thought. Humble but witty and charming, and without stuttering.

 

"You came back to get the list. Of meetings," she said obliquely.

 

"No. No, I found my own way." 

 

She nodded.

 

She waited. He waited, trying to think of something witty and humble and charming to say after admitting he'd joined Alcoholics Anonymous.

 

"It's four in the morning, Mr. Martin," she said.

 

"I-I couldn't sleep so I went for a drive, and I ended up here and..." He'd sat across the street in his car for twenty minutes while he worked up his nerve. He had, too - gotten his nerve worked up but lost it between the curb and the Emergency Room. "You said you'd take these stitches out. They itch."

 

"Okay. We're quiet this morning. Come with me and let me take a look at you." She gestured for him to follow her into the main triage room, which Mulder did. He shifted his hat in his hands and kept his eyes open for his mislaid nerve.

 

She pointed to an exam table, and he sat on it while she tiptoed to reach a bottle on the top shelf. Retrieving it, she snapped on a rubber glove and poured some of the clear liquid into her gloved hand.

 

Mulder's eyes widened. The last time someone did that, it was during his Army physical. That examination hadn't turned out as he expected.

 

"The stitches aren't supposed to come out for another few days, but since you're here, it should be fine if the cut has healed."

 

She knew how long it had been since she'd last seen him.

 

"I heal quickly. What is that you're doing?" The liquid smelled familiar, but Mulder couldn't place what she rubbed on his forehead.

 

"Baby oil. The Band-Aid is on your eyebrow. If I rip it off, part of your eyebrow will come with it. If I put baby oil on the bandage first, it comes off easier. Close your eyes in case it drips, sir."

 

He took a deep breath and tried to relax. “You were an Army nurse?" he asked as she worked the Band-Aid free.

 

"How did you know?" she responded curiously.

 

"I'm a good guesser. Korea?"

 

"I was stateside," she answered. "Where were you?"

 

"Italy, and Wiltshire before Normandy," he answered succinctly, his eyes still closed. "Through France and Germany as far as Munich."

 

He didn't offer details and she didn't ask. Soldiers who wanted to brag about the war did so for hours. Mulder saw the monsters, still had the nightmares, and did not care to discuss either.

 

He noticed she didn't elaborate, either.

 

"In Wiltshire, my friend – Byers - and I bunked with another captain who, in 1941, met two RAF pilots at the Harvard Club in New York. He said he bought them a drink at the club and, at their request, took them on a tour of Times Square. At midnight, the pilots thanked him, saying they'd wanted to see Times Square before they died, but they'd been shot down over Berlin the previous night. Killed in action," Mulder informed her. "The two pilots turned around, walked into the shadows, and vanished. Captain Banks said he never saw them again."

 

"Their dying wish was to see Times Square?"

 

"It does lack imagination," he agreed. "Captain Banks remembered their names - Jones and Taylor - and it was early November when he encountered them. I did some checking after the war. On November 7, 1941, the RAF lost twenty bombers over Berlin. Do you want to guess two of the pilot's names?"

 

"Those are common surnames," she countered. "Assuming he told you what he thought was the truth, what are the odds of those names showing up by chance?"

 

"Both names?” he said. “One name is chance; both names with John Byers as my witness deserve less skepticism, I think.”

 

He felt a dry cotton ball on his face, wiping away the baby oil, and a wet one smelling of alcohol.

 

"Historically, doppelgangers precede the time of death or coincide with it," he said, "although in 1612, while in Paris, the poet John Donne had visions of his wife crying and carrying a dead baby in her arms. He was too ill to travel, so he sent a message to England asking about her confinement. His visions continued, but it was months before Donne learned she had lost their child in January. His visions were described as doppelgangers, but this sounds like bi-location rather than a doppelganger: his grieving, living wife was bi-locating. If Donne had seen the baby as it died, it would be a doppelganger. Anyway, the British pilots Captain Banks saw weren't doppelgangers because they were dead, and I don't think it can be called bi-location once the person's location is The Great Beyond. I'd say Captain Banks saw honest-to-goodness spooks."

 

"Are you putting me on, Mr. Martin?"

 

"It's true. I checked out several books about ghosts and paranormal activity from the public library."

 

"How would two Royal Air Force - British - pilots get into the New York Harvard Club? Don't you have to have gone to Harvard?" her voice asked skeptically as her hand readjusted his head.

 

He shrugged one shoulder without moving his face. "Details. Admit it: it is a good story. Better than my last one about slipping on some ice."

 

"Yet even less believable," she responded, but without malice.

 

"Is your hair auburn?" he asked. "I'm color blind. I went years without knowing the Wicked Witch of the West was supposed to be green."

 

"My hair is auburn," she confirmed.

 

"Why the night shift?" He filled in the blanks of his mental puzzle. “It’s a hard shift for a pretty young woman.”

 

"I like my days free," she answered vaguely. "The wound has healed well. Very well, in fact. You must be drinking Ovaltine. Let's get the sutures out." He heard steel rattling against steel, and he assumed she picked up the scissors and forceps. "Are you always this curious, or are we playing twenty questions, Mr. Martin?"

 

He opened his eyes, looking at her. "I'm making pleasant conversation while you dismiss my paranormal anecdote and yank knotted steel threads out of my flesh, Nurse Scully."

 

She 'hummed' him, seeming unconvinced, but those blue eyes twinkled.

 

"I have a little girl," she said after a few seconds.

 

"I thought so,” he said, feeling triumphant. “I thought you were a widow with a young child. Is your daughter four or five years old?"

 

"She just turned four. How did you know?"

 

He shrugged without moving his head. "Details. You're a good trauma nurse, but you're not old enough to have been in World War II. The next option is Korea, and they started drafting doctors there in 1948. I was guessing you joined the Nurse Corps after spring 1948 either to be with your husband, or because a man you cared about died, and you married once there. If you had a child after that, she’s no older than four or five."

 

"Impressive. Unsettling, but impressive. I was in nursing school when John finished medical school. He was drafted, and I joined the Nurse Corps in fall 1948. Emily was born in the fall of 1949. So I was an Army nurse, but not for long." Her hand left his forehead. After an awkward pause, she said, “I left the Army expecting a beautiful little girl; John left in a coffin with an American flag over it.”

 

For several seconds, Mulder didn’t respond. His triumph evaporated, and he sensed her anger and loneliness. Her emotions had a tired, heavy air, like they stretched back centuries rather than years.

 

He moved his hand an inch from the edge of the exam table, toward her, but returned his palm to its proper place on the smooth stainless steel.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said, which seemed inadequate. He racked his brain for something consoling, but still witty and humble and charming. "The label inside your sweater says 'Saks Fifth Avenue.' You bought it on sale, half off, last spring."

 

"That's unsettling." She pulled the first suture out, and he flinched. "Sorry," she said, and wrinkled her forehead as if to take away the pain. She seemed genuinely sorry, which made her brow wrinkle palliative. "Four more."

 

"Four more," he echoed. "How many more until I get your telephone number?"

 

"No guarantees," she reminded him, and he chuckled.

 

She sighed, put one hand on his cheek, and held his head still.

 

"I'll remember the baby oil trick," he said. "My son wants to play on his school's baseball team in the spring - and he spoke to me yesterday - so we tried batting practice again. Now he has scrapes on both elbows."

 

"I've never played baseball, but how did he get batting injuries on his elbows, Mr. Martin?" She still held his face firmly as she started on the next suture. "Don't you just hold the bat and swing?"

 

Her hand felt warm, and her skin smelled like babies and Ivory soap. He sensed strength from her, and a calm certainty. He had a pleasant sensation in his belly - half butterflies, but half an inexplicable stillness as if, for once, he was exactly where Destiny wanted him.

 

"He's a Wonder Boy," Mulder said. "He's the best thing to ever happen to me, but sometimes I wonder about that boy, Nurse Scully."

 

*~*~*~*

 

This was not low-key - or witty or charming - but it might be humble: chasing a woman through the cold, silent streets of the Bronx before dawn yelling “nurse!” after her. He could keep up with her, but Mulder couldn't get Nurse Scully to stop or listen until she reached the subway entrance and he had her trapped at the turn-stile for a few seconds.

 

"Leave me alone! Haven't you caused enough trouble for one night?" Her cheeks flushed and her eyes snapped fire at him. "No, you're not going to get my telephone number!"

 

"I-I am sorry. Go back to the hospital. They'll give you your job back."

 

Nurse Scully ignored him as she fished through her wallet, then entire purse for a subway token. In exasperation, she dumped the contents of the purse out on an empty bench. A tube of lipstick rolled into the shadows. She didn't bother to retrieve it.

 

Turned out, Mulder wasn't the only man in the ER who liked Nurse Scully. Ten minutes ago, a young doctor observed them chit-chatting as she removed the stitches and, recognizing Mulder, reprimanded Nurse Scully for being "unprofessional," among other things. Mulder disagreed. The doctor's ego had taken a blow, and things went downhill from there. In the end, Mulder made a few unkind observations about the doctor, Nurse Scully got fired, and the doctor called Mulder a money-grubbing bastard and the worst thing to ever happen to New York City. Then ordered both Mulder and Nurse Scully out of the hospital. Dr. Narcissism must have been a Brooklyn Dodgers fan.

 

"They will give you your job back," Mulder assured her. "That doctor was out of line. He-he's jealous and neurotic and he shouldn't have talked to you like that."

 

"You're right; he shouldn't have, but I don't need a hero. Thank you so much, Superman. Not only do I not have a job, I don't have a reference."

 

"I promise you the hospital will give you your job back. You have a little girl to take care of. I'll talk to the director or the chief of staff or whoever I need to talk to. They'll fire that doctor and rehire you."

 

"Why? Because you'll tell them to? I don't need a witty mob boss to look out for me."

 

She found a fifteen-cent subway token and fed it into the turnstile, leaving him on the other side. The turnstile required tokens, the token booth was closed, and the subway had cost a nickel the last time Mulder rode it.

 

"Hey!" Mulder yelled. His voice echoed through the tunnel over the roar of the approaching train. "Nurse Scully?"

 

She thought he was witty.

 

He put a hand on his hat to keep it in place as the subway pushed a wave of warm air past him. "Hey! I'm not a mob boss!"

 

"Go to Hell, mister!"

 

"I'm a witty baseball player," he informed her as the doors of the subway car closed. He held up his right hand, showing her the heavy gold ring. "We won the World Series! For the ninth time!"

 

Mulder leaned over the turnstile and told the back of the subway train. "I was most valuable player three times! But I'm a humble about it!"

 

The train disappeared from view.

 

"Shit!" he said to no one in particular. A whole city full of easy, empty-headed, long-legged brunette models and actresses, and Mulder got hung up on one hardheaded, redheaded little nurse.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Nurse Scully better show up soon or she’d find a remorseful Mulder-shaped icicle on her doorstep. Mulder glanced up from his seat on the cement stoop and huddled deeper into his winter coat. A few minutes later, he heard footsteps approach and knew without looking it was her.

 

"Dear God. You don't understand 'no,' do you, mister?" said an unhappy female voice above him. He looked up. The streetlight behind Nurse Scully outlined her head with a halo-like glow.

 

"I'm not a mob boss. I-I brought your lipstick." His teeth chattered as he stood up and took off his hat. "I got your address from the hospital. I don't mean to bother you; I- I don't want you to lose your job because of me."

 

"No man drives all the way from the Bronx to Brooklyn Heights out of the goodness of his heart or to return a dime store lipstick, Mister-" She paused expectantly.

 

"Mulder. Fox Mulder.” He reached for the bags of groceries she held. He remained empty handed. “How did you know I drove?"

 

With her hands full, she cocked her head in the direction of his shiny, out-of-place black Cadillac wedged into a space far down the block.

 

"You should work for Hoover."

 

She looked at him tiredly as she shifted the bags. "Are you a murderer, a rapist, or a thief, Mr. Mulder?"

 

He shook his head.

 

"Married, insane, or a communist?"

 

Another shake. He took off his World Series ring and held it out.

 

She squinted at the heavy ring, with its intricate gold lettering and diamond. "So you are a witty mob boss?" she said with less malice.

 

"A humble ex-baseball player."

 

"Fine. You're a witty, humble, albeit rather quirky ex-baseball player who got me fired. Hold my groceries for a moment and we'll call it even." She maneuvered to give him two bulging brown paper sacks, and balanced the third sack on her hip as she opened the security door. She let him in, and didn't take the bags back.

 

Not sure what was happening or his role in it, Mulder followed her into the foyer. He ended up holding all three bags along with his hat while she went to the door of the first apartment and knocked softly. He overheard a brief exchange between Mrs. Scully and the old woman in curlers and a robe who answered. A small, sleeping girl in pink footie pajamas passed into Nurse Scully’s arms.

 

"Put the bags down," she said over the child's blonde head. "I'll get them. Thank you for going to such trouble, Mr. Mulder, but it wasn't necessary. I'm fine. We're fine. You can go."

 

"I'll carry them upstairs if you want. How could you manage three bags and her-" He nodded to the limp child, "-at the same time?"

 

"I've had some practice." She waited for him to move, but shrugged. "Fine. Suit yourself."

 

"Which floor do you live on?" he asked. They reached the third set of steps and she hadn't slowed her pace.

 

"The top. We have a view." The child stirred against her shoulder and blinked sleepily back at Mulder.

 

"So do I, but I have an elevator."  

 

"Well, the building has one. It's been stationary since last summer."

 

"That's a closet," he told her as they reached the next flight. "An elevator that doesn't move is a closet. Or, in Manhattan, a studio apartment."

 

She ran out of steps, stopped, and paused to catch her breath and reposition her daughter. Mulder's right knee began to protest. 

 

Nurse Scully must have difficulty keeping track of things in her purse, because she shifted the girl again and set her down on the mat to hunt for the key with both hands. After unlocking and putting her shoulder against the door to push it open, she herded her half-awake daughter inside the small apartment, pointed her down a hallway, and turned to Mulder to take the bags.

 

"Leave your door open and I'll carry them to the kitchen for you. I can see it from here."  

 

She glanced behind her at the racks of children's clothes and her own dresses hung up to dry in the living room, probably decided he'd seen laundry before, and held open the door for him.

 

He saw a nice apartment: small, but warm, homey. Fresh apples and pears in a bowl on the kitchen table. A child's artwork decorated the side of the refrigerator, and a calico cat slid through the door with him and jumped up on the sofa. Mulder set the groceries on the kitchen table. He tried to figure out another excuse, short of bleeding again, to hang around, when the little girl wandered in and began examining her mother's purchases.

 

"It's not morning yet, Em," her mother said. Nurse Scully had her head in the icebox as she rearranged the bundles of her waiting-to-be-ironed nurses' uniforms to make room for groceries. Mulder supposed yesterday had been washday.    

 

The girl stopped. She rubbed one hand against her cheek and scrutinized him so long it became unsettling. "I am Emily. I am four. Who are you?" she asked as she climbed up and stood on a kitchen chair to appraise him from a different angle.

 

"I'm Mr. Mulder," he replied cautiously, toying with his hat. "I'm thirty-eight."

 

"Are you a nice man?"

 

"I-I try to be." That was a subjective question.

 

She looked him up and down again, her eyes full of serious four-year old thoughts. "You may feed my cat."

 

Nurse Scully told Emily again it was still nighttime, but glanced at the kitchen clock, which ticked past five, and decided it wasn't worth the effort. "Dry food, honey. I didn't buy the tuna for the cat."

 

Emily rattled the box of food. The scruffy cat streaked into the kitchen and jumped up onto the table, meowing expectantly.

 

"You're trouble," Mrs. Scully informed the tomcat. "I only let you in because you're lost and I feel sorry for you."

 

"I'll take what I can get," Mulder said.

 

She looked at him tiredly, set a cracked bowl on the table, and poured cat food into it.

 

"Let me buy you breakfast," he asked as he helped pet Emily's cat. "Both of you. Aiello's will be open soon."

 

"Aiello's is on Coney Island." A crease appeared between her eyebrows. "It's barely morning."

 

"By the time we get there, they will be open." 

 

"I have a daughter," she said, as if he hadn't noticed.

 

"I have a son. They let children in the restaurant. Even my child. It's Coney Island; they let the Lobster Boy and the Bearded Lady in the restaurant." He watched her internal struggle play out across her face. "It's breakfast," he reminded her before she could decline. "I like you. I think you like me. I'm quirky and witty and not a mob boss, and I carried groceries up all those stairs. Let me buy you and your daughter breakfast with some circus freaks." He wrinkled his brow back at her. "I let you sew my skin up with steel wire and yank it out again. Do you make every man work this hard to get a date?"

 

She smiled - a genuine, wistful smile. "I have a four-year-old daughter, a full-time job, chronic sleep deprivation, no elevator, and I smell like vomit. Did you see a line of men outside my door?"

 

The calico cat paused between bites, watching them.

 

"I have no real job, an ex-wife who hates me, an uncoordinated son who currently acknowledges to me only during the hours designated by the court, and eight days of sobriety. I'll take what I can get," Mulder responded.

 

She thought another few seconds, but he sensed her answer. He grinned broadly. She flushed like a shy girl would.

 

"Since there’s no dissuading you, let's hear the pitch, Mr. Mulder," Her poise returned. "Tall, dark, handsome, and obsessive only gets you so far."

 

"Well, I'm not a mob boss. I-I-I did play baseball, but I retired. I'm, I'm divorced, with a teenage son. I have a captain’s dress uniform from World War II, and medals and nightmares to go with it." He paused to consider what else might be relevant. "On my best behavior, but not perfect. I think that's it. Not a thief, communist, or murderer."

 

She crossed her arms, focusing her gaze on him until he began to fidget. "An out-of-work, divorced, ex-baseball player?"

 

"A witty, handsome, out-of-work, divorced, ex-baseball player," he stipulated.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder took the steps from the parking garage two at a time. He hurried down the corridor and through the double doors of the main office. Byers' pretty secretary was on the telephone but held one hand up for Mulder’s coat and hat. She waved Mulder on into Byers' office.  

 

"You're late," Richard Langly said tersely as Mulder burst through the office door. "We were about to start without you."

 

"Please feel free." Mulder settled into a leather chair and crossed his legs at the ankles. 

 

"Where have you been?" Frohike asked, as John Byers asked at the same time, "Did something happen?"

 

"I'm here," Mulder answered evenly. "Please proceed with the dissection of my life." He smelled the salt from the cold ocean spray on his clothes. His mouth still tasted of blueberries, pancake syrup, and coffee. He brushed his fingertips against the healing scar on his forehead, but lowered his hand self-consciously.

 

His agent, accountant, and attorney exchanged worried looks.

 

"I'm fine, boys," he said. "I was talking with someone, went for a walk, and lost track of time. Go ahead. I'm sure Byers is uneasy we're behind on his agenda. Heaven knows my life isn't interesting enough we need an agenda, but I know he has one."

 

Byers frowned. He did have an agenda typed up with mimeographed copies for everyone.

 

As a real estate attorney, John Byers sealed the deals that built Manhattan's skyline. Byers had a successful practice, an adoring wife, two daughters, a dog, a house with a yard, and a life Mulder envied. He was rigidly conservative, trim, and so clean-cut he squeaked. He parked a Studebaker station wagon with a luggage rack in the Senior Partner space, and always looked like he got a haircut that morning. He and Mulder served in the same Army battalion by chance, and only at Mulder's insistence did Byers now serve as his personal attorney. Byers did fine with meetings and trusts, but developed a facial twitch at a court hearing. Byers had grown a neatly-trimmed beard in the last month - a big leap for him, fashion-wise.

 

Melvin Frohike, on the other hand, was the antithesis of John Byers. He neared sixty: a dark, squat fellow who appeared in public unshaven and wearing clothing apparently randomly pulled from his closet. Frohike said his scruffiness kept the cameras focused on the baseball players he represented rather than on his handsome face. The strategy worked. Frohike reigned as the best sports agent in the business, but over the years became Mulder's friend as well. Frohike liked the ladies and reported an uncanny ability at charming his way into their good graces. He confided to Mulder once, after a few drinks, his sweetheart died during the 1918 flu epidemic while Frohike fought the Great War. He served in World War II as well, though Frohike was vague about his time in the Pacific. Frohike never married, and lived alone and eccentrically on the top floor of a warehouse downtown. He had his own jukebox, movie projector, and Coca-Cola cooler in his immense living room, and an unending supply of off-color jokes, broken junk, and conspiracy theories. William adored him.

 

Richard Langly, Mulder knew little about and thought it wise to remain ignorant. Langly wore an ill-fitting short-sleeved white shirt and black tie - the same shirt, with a mustard stain on the front pocket - and looked like he'd dressed up at his mother's insistence. He had thick, black-rimmed glasses, and kept his blond hair very short: again, as if his mother insisted he get a haircut. He worked from his tiny apartment rather than a firm, and shared Frohike’s vague but omnipresent paranoia. Mulder hired Langly at Frohike's recommendation; the two men shared a passion for all things paranoid and knew each other through dealings Mulder suspected weren't entirely legal.

 

The secretary entered Byers' office bearing a tray with coffee and a single cup of tea for Mulder. As she leaned down to serve him, Mulder whispered to her. She nodded before she moved away.

 

Most wives would object to a woman so attractive working for their husband. Susanne Byers, secure in the innate sensuality European women possessed, sent her Tupperware containers of homemade Polish crullers. John Byers, after a decade of marriage, remained so smitten with his wife he hired the secretary for her typing and shorthand skills, and wouldn't notice if an ear grew from her forehead.

 

"Item one: ex-wife," Byers said, his finger on his memo. "Phoebe wants your son for Christmas and says you can have him for New Year's."

 

"No," Mulder replied. "We have a schedule. He's with me for Christmas and Thanksgiving, and with Phoebe for New Years and Easter. William and I are going to Aspen with you at Christmas."

 

"I'll deal with it," Byers assured him. "Item two: Phoebe wants you to pay-"

 

Mulder interrupted. "We do this every time, Byers. I'm tired of Phoebe being items one through five on the memorandum of my life. As long as I get to see William whenever I want, pay whatever she wants."

 

Byers' secretary set down her tray and opened the liquor cabinet in the corner of the office. As she searched for something in the drawer, Mulder felt the men's eyes move from him to the cabinet and back. If they’d been in Frohike’s office, the cabinet would be fully stocked and have a full bucket of fresh ice at ten AM. The first shelf of Byers’ liquor cabinet had held the same bottle of Pappy Van Winkle bourbon for the past year – still inches from empty, the bottle of Glenmorangie Mulder gave Byers last Christmas, and the Nehi Root Beer Byers’ girls liked.

 

"Move on, fellows. Item three." Mulder held his tea but didn’t drink it. He uncrossed his ankles and flexed his right knee, which complained about all the stairs.

 

"Are you sure?" Frohike asked. "Calling a truce with Phoebe doesn't affect me, but Byers has those boat payments."

 

The secretary checked a few more drawers in the office before she shook her head at Mulder and slipped out of the room. Frohike's eyes followed her hips as she walked away.

 

"I paid cash for my boat. I do not have a boat payment, Mulder," Byers said earnestly.

 

"I know, Byers. I'm not willing to give her a blank check, but it shouldn't take three attorneys and four months to determine who pays for school pictures or summer camp. I have better things to do than fight with Phoebe Mulder about money. Langly, as long as it sounds reasonable and it's for William, pay what she wants."

 

Langly nodded once. "Done."

 

Frohike still looked skeptical. Byers wrinkled his forehead as he marked through multiple items on his agenda.

 

"You think I'm being chump?" Mulder asked Frohike, wanting an honest answer.

 

"Right up until this morning," Frohike answered.

 

The secretary entered the office smiling triumphantly. She held out a small foil package to Mulder: Rolaids. "My purse," she mouthed silently.

 

"You have an ex-wife and a teenage son?" Mulder whispered.

 

"Mother-in-law," she mouthed, and slipped out, closing the door silently.

 

"You've eaten, Mulder," Frohike said. "Your ulcer is acting up. You're telling us to give your ex-wife whatever she wants, you're sober, and you're eating again? And you've had your stitches out."

 

Byers stopped revising his agenda and looked up like a curious Irish Setter.

 

Mulder chewed three chalky tablets and washed them down with a sip of tea.

 

"I detect a lady in your life," Frohike speculated. "The ER nurse?"

 

Mulder shrugged and pursed his lips so he wouldn't smile.

 

"He's in love," Langly said, seeming disdainful.

 

"Well, it's about damn time." Frohike picked up his fountain pen. He gestured to Byers. "Is there still an item three, Byers?" 

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder got caught up in the game of street ball and sensed rather than saw Mrs. Scully watching as she approached. He helped Emily swing and sent her running for first base. Her over-sized boots posed an impediment. He was correct; Nurse Scully was an 'it's on sale, you'll grow into it' kind of mother.

 

From the window of the apartment building, her babysitter applauded. 

 

"You are like Emily's cat, Mr. Mulder," came a woman's voice from the sidewalk. "I let you in because you looked pitiful and now you keep showing up on my doorstep."  

 

He handed the bat off to one of the neighborhood boys, took off his hat, and walked to her eagerly. The sky moved from light to dark gray, and the wind felt icy.

 

"That's what happens when you feed them. Friday night - you said we could have dinner Friday night. It's Friday, it's almost night." He’d arrived at five in case her definition of 'night' was early. What Mulder lacked in tactfulness, he made up for in doggedness. “I-I would have called, but you don’t have a telephone.”

 

"At breakfast, I thought you meant next Friday." Nurse Scully folded her arms, and he felt a forehead crease coming on. "Two meals in one day? I don't know, Mr. Mulder."

 

He waited as her gaze shifted between him and her daughter, who waved from first base. He knew he meant next Friday too, but that seemed so far away. Mulder still hadn’t figured out what people did all day if they didn't drink, fight wars, or play baseball.

 

"I've been at work all afternoon. I'm not sure I'd be much fun this evening if I fall asleep with my nose in my soup."

 

"Did you go back to the hospital?" Mulder asked. She wore her white cap and the stiff hem of a nurses' uniform peeked out from underneath her winter coat.

 

"No. One of the agencies needed a private duty nurse. I called and they had a day job for me this weekend. I thought I'd better work now and sleep later. If I don't see Emily tonight, I won't see her again until Sunday. I didn't think you meant this Friday. Could I get a rain check?"

 

"Bring her."

 

She rubbed her temples. "Thank you, but no. And thank you for being nice to her, but she's never seen me date. We're used to our lives the way they are. I thought about it today, and I don't want men tramping in and out of her life. You and I can have dinner next week, if you still want to, but-"

 

"I want to." Mulder spoke so quickly his frosty breath didn't have time to dissipate in the cold air. He might be tramping into her life, but he had no plan to tramp out. "I thought about it today too, and I want to see you again. Tonight, and next Friday night, and as often as you'll let me. Pizza at Grimaldi's place tonight, Peter Luger's and 'South Pacific' on Saturday, or hot dogs and a walk in Central Park. You name it, but I want- I-I want. I want to see you."

 

The wind shifted, sending autumn leaves skittering across the pavement. She looked up at him. The tendrils of hair escaping her cap blew wildly around her face.

 

"It'll snow tonight,” he said. “Patsy Grimaldi has a 900-degree coal-fired oven. It takes one minute, forty-six seconds to bake a pie. It sure would be nice to get a table near that oven, order one of his pizza pies, talk about our day, and pretend we're normal for a few hours."

 

Despite the frigid wind, he felt a thaw.

 

"I like opera," she said. "I haven't been in years."

 

"Is there any other place on Earth I could take you on a date besides the opera?" he asked. "Take your time. Think hard."

 

She smiled at him enigmatically. A warm, fluttering glow formed in his belly and spread until his fingertips tingled.

 

"I must like you, Nurse Scully," Mulder said, which was the understatement of the century. He liked strawberry milkshakes; he couldn't remember the last time a woman's smile gave him butterflies. "Pizza pie and soda tonight, though. I have to work up to the opera."

 

"All right."

 

"All right," he echoed. "Gott wurfelt nicht."

 

"God does not play dice," she translated. "You know Mr. Einstein."

 

"Not personally, but I know fate is fate," he said.

 

"We aren't perfect, Mr. Mulder," she promised him. The season's first snowflakes landed on her eyelashes. "As you said this morning, it is complicated."

 

"I can live with complicated," he said.

 

*~*~*~*

 

The front desk at The Plaza took messages and put calls through to his apartment, but Mulder had a telephone in the living room, one in his bedroom, and a newly-installed phone in Will’s room. Dana Scully used Emily’s babysitter’s phone, so Mulder wasn’t supposed to call while Mrs. Osborne listened to “Guiding Light” or “Perry Mason” on the radio, or she watched “Search for Tomorrow” on her new television set.

     

Mulder consulted the broadcast schedule in the newspaper, and dialed the operator as soon as his wristwatch and Mrs. Osborne’s ‘stories’ permitted him.

 

"Mrs. Osborne, this is Fox Mulder. I got a message Mrs. Scully had called. May I speak to her please?"

 

"Of course. Let me get her, Mr. Mulder. She's about to burst if she doesn't tell you her news, so excuse her for being so forward," Emily's babysitter replied, as though women hadn’t begun to call men left and right these days.  

 

Mulder held the receiver away from his ear as Mrs. Osborne bellowed, "Dana!" out her apartment door loudly enough to carry up four floors.

 

As usual, he heard clicks as the other old ladies in her apartment building picked up their phones to listen on the party line. Mulder was, for reasons beyond him, “one of New York's most eligible bachelors”- an endorsement as deep as the society page printing it. Her neighbors seemed to conjure up mental images of a tuxedo-clad Mulder sipping champagne on a balcony in Paris rather than a blue jean-clad Mulder, alone in the corner suite at The Plaza Hotel he called home, wearing an old gray flannel shirt, drinking flat ginger ale he found in the refrigerator, playing the old records Will hated, and picking at the hole he discovered in his sock.

 

"She's coming, Mr. Mulder."

 

"Thank you."

 

He stretched out on the sofa and watched the snow began to blanket Central Park outside his living room window. Will's Hi-Fi played in the background with the vinyl 45's set aside and a stack of Mulder's old celluloid 78's loaded to drop and play one after another. Robert Johnson's smooth Delta blues rolled from the speaker, singing of a world far removed from Mulder's. Mulder’s parents' Colored maid, Rosa, introduced Mulder to 'race music,' as it was called in those days, and this was her favorite: “Kind Hearted Woman.” She gave him the record for his birthday, and Rosa told him a secret one night, while he was home from Oxford for the holidays. She'd 'knowed' Robert Johnson years back, and thought the song might be about her. Mulder remembered how Rosa said it with a Mona Lisa smile and a twinkle in her eyes. He realized how she had 'knowed' the mysterious bluesman some Mississippi night in her youth.

 

True or not, someday, Mulder had thought - the winter he had turned twenty-two - he wanted a woman to think back to some night with him and smile a secret smile years later.

 

"Mr. Mulder," Mrs. Scully’s voice said breathlessly. "Hello."

 

"Yeeesss, Nurse Scully." He let his head rest on the arm of the couch. "I understand you have news. We have an audience, though."

 

He heard guilty clicks as a couple of eves-droppers hung up, but their conversation continued to be shared with the majority of her Brooklyn neighbors.

 

"I got the job," she said. "In pediatrics. Regular day shift. No midnights and no weekends. I can be home for dinner every night."   

 

"That's wonderful," Mulder replied. "When do you start?"

 

"Monday. They want me Monday." She paused. Mulder heard her take a long, shaky breath. "Did you do this, Mr. Mulder? I don't have any experience with pediatrics. I'm a trauma nurse."

 

"You think they shouldn't have hired you?" he countered evasively.

 

“I don't understand why the hospital would even interview me. A well-paying job close to home falls in my lap? This has Fox Mulder-meddling written all over it."

 

Dana Scully was as independent a woman as he'd ever met. Too independent, he thought sometimes. He admitted, "My son had his tonsils out last year. His doctor is on staff at the hospital. Yes, I- I made a telephone call."

 

He waited for a response.

 

"Yes, I meddled," he admitted, picking at his sock again.

 

Another silence, so loud Mulder heard the traffic from Fifth Avenue far below him as he and everyone else listening in to their private neighborhood soap opera waited.

 

On Mulder’s Hi-Fi, Robert Johnson's fingers danced over guitar strings, coaxing music like nothing else on the planet. Legend said Johnson met the Devil at the crossroads and, in exchange for his soul, learned to play the blues like a man possessed. The story intrigued Mulder: a young bluesman emerged from Nowhere, Mississippi in 1936 and vanished as mysteriously in 1938 at the age of 27, leaving 29 tinny recordings and a legend behind. No photographs remained of Johnson, and no films. No wife, no children, no written records, no grave. Only the music.

 

"You don't owe me anything," Mulder said. "I called and got you the interview, but you got the job on your own merits."

 

He straightened the stack of books on the end table. The top two books were Will's – “Brave New World” and “Fahrenheit 451” - required reading for school. So far, William had read the sex parts of “Brave New World,” but skipped “Fahrenheit 451” and instead wheedled the plot out of his father. Beneath those was “Antwort auf Hiob” by Carl Jung, “Science and Human Behavior” by B.F. Skinner, and the new science fiction novel by Isaac Asimov. Mulder picked up “Brave New World,” fanning the corner of the pages with his thumb.

 

"Congratulations," Mulder said once he couldn't stand the silence on the telephone line anymore. "Nurse Scully?"

 

"You can't buy me, Mr. Mulder. Me or my daughter."

 

"I’m not trying to buy you," he responded. "I’m trying to get you a job where you're free to go on a date on Friday night."

 

Her neighbor's cuckoo clock announced the hour, and a teakettle and a husband got shushed while the neighborhood held its breath. From beyond the stars, Robert Johnson played on, singing to a woman he loved and left behind.

 

"Thank you," Mulder heard her say softly.   

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder lived in The Plaza Hotel. In a corner apartment with a terrace in a world-renowned hotel with a history of paranormal activity, but still in a hotel – something Phoebe’s attorney liked to point out. A valet parked his car, maids pressed his shirts, and his barber worked in the basement. The Oak Room at The Plaza was among the best restaurants in Manhattan. The Oak Room had an impressive and glitzy bar – though the pretty girl Mulder wanted to impress likely cared as much about glitz as she did about Mulder having his own baseball card.

 

Other people cared, though. Mulder walked into the restaurant with Mrs. Scully on his arm, and every head turned in the smoky, medieval atmosphere. In The Oak Room, New York's old-boys-club shaped history while their wives cast sideways glances and whispered over their cocktails.

 

If Mulder took Mrs. Scully and Emily out, fans saw ‘a family’ having hotdogs, and minded their manners. People stared or waved or asked for autographs, but nothing obnoxious. Without Emily, though… Mulder warned Dana Scully about reporters and photographers during their first “big grownup date,” as her daughter called it. He told her fans got star struck and forgot their manners. Talked about ‘Fox Mulder’ like he was a character on the radio. Mrs. Scully said she understood.

 

Mulder hadn’t factored in the rude old gentlemen who intruded on their dinner before the waiter even took their order. The man’s suit looked expensive, and he acted as if he owned the place - or, at least, owned more shares of stock in The Plaza than Mulder. The man planted himself beside their table with his lit cigarette a foot from Mrs. Scully’s face. She looked to Mulder to do something, and Mulder looked to the maître d'. The maître d' looked elsewhere.

 

"You had a great career, Mulder. I saw every homerun you ever hit at Yankee Stadium," the old man said. He patted Mulder on the shoulder with a fatherly air. "You hit 131 triples and 389 doubles in 6,820 at bats." He paused for a drag from his cigarette. Mrs. Scully leaned back as a cloud of smoke rolled across their table. "I remember that and I forget my wife's birthday these days. Yes, you had your moment in the sun. We're all proud."

 

Mulder managed a tight smile. It was 6,821 at-bats. Also, he didn’t enjoy being spoken of in the past tense, as though his life ended once he stepped off the ball field.

 

"Tough to keep up with those nineteen-year old kids, isn't it?" the man continued. Mulder received a few more sympathetic pats as he began to grit his teeth. "No one blames you. You're a legend, Mulder. You quit while you were ahead."

 

Mulder gritted his teeth harder. People at neighboring tables turned to watch. Mulder reminded himself of Frohike’s rule number 4 – don’t punch people – and raised his hand to signal the maître d'. 

 

The old man said, "Life goes on, though. It's good to see you have new interests." He gestured with his cigarette to Mrs. Scully. He said, "Lovely," the way soldiers appraised a prostitute, not the way gentleman complemented a lady. “Enjoy.”

 

Dana Scully flushed and stared at her lap. Rule number 4, Rule number 4, Mulder told himself.

 

"Excuse us..." Mulder’s chair squeaked back. He stood, picked up her drink, and offered Mrs. Scully his arm. He had no destination in mind except away.

 

"My apologies, Mr. Mulder; I didn't mean to intrude," the smoking man drawled, not looking the least bit apologetic. "Please, you and Miss Scully stay."

 

Mulder steered her toward the restaurant’s kitchen and kept walking. Once they stepped through the swinging doors, he stopped. Mulder gave her the martini glass. “Take this before I drink it or go back and throw it at him.”

 

Through the round window in one kitchen door, he saw the old man in the dining room stub out his cigarette in their unused ashtray. And sit down. People filled every seat in the The Oak Room; Mulder couldn’t request another table. 

 

Mrs. Scully stood in the Oak Room’s kitchen in an evening dress, holding her cocktail as griddles sizzled and pans flamed and waiters whizzed past with trays.

 

“Mulder,” the head chef called from a stove. He spoke with a Brooklyn rather than the French accent he usually affected. “Somebody hasslin’ you?”

 

Mulder nodded. A coach once accused Mulder of leading the league in room service. Now Mulder remembered why. He couldn’t recall the last ‘date’ he’d been on that Frohike hadn’t carefully orchestrated for the cameras.

 

The chef said, “My maître d' is a moron, but I can’t leave my Béarnaise sauce. You want somethin’ sent up?”

 

“No.” As much as Mulder longed to invite Mrs. Scully upstairs to order room service and watch television, nice boys didn’t do that with nice girls.

 

“Take the pretty lady in the back.” The chef waved a big spoon toward the employees’ break room. “I’ll tell your waiter.”

 

In the back room, the overhead light wasn’t even on. Mulder flipped the switch. A bare bulb lit the room, revealing battered card tables littered with old magazines, coffee cups, and ashtrays. Mulder occasionally wandered downstairs and ate with the kitchen staff, but he’d envisioned this evening going differently.

 

“Impressed yet?” he asked Mrs. Scully.

 

To his surprise, she chuckled. “At you not punching him? Yes. How do you stand that?”

 

He shrugged. “I used to drink.”

 

Waiters and busboys hurried past them, into the room. With superhuman speed, the overflowing ashtrays disappeared and the tables got cleared. One waiter unfurled a white tablecloth; another laid out china plates and silver utensils. Since the choices were finding another restaurant – at six on a Saturday night in Manhattan, or going hungry, or sitting down – Mulder pulled out a folding metal chair for Mrs. Scully.

 

The head chef brought a bud vase containing a single white rose. “You’re gonna give this chump a chance, pretty lady,” the chef said. “He’s the last of the true gentlemen ballplayers. Give him a chance, and I’m gonna make you a dinner to die for.”

 

She nodded and blushed again. Once they were alone, Mulder watched as she tried to arrange her black dress so it didn’t touch the dirty floor.

 

"I am sorry," Mulder said. "People they don't think about what they're saying."

 

“I think that man knew exactly what he was saying,” she answered. “Who does he think he is? Doesn’t he realize you can hear him? You’re a human being, not a stud horse?”

 

Mulder studied his place setting.

 

Nurse Scully picked up her martini. She contemplated it before she asked, “How much do you think this drink cost?”

 

“A dollar?” Mulder guessed. He got a detailed invoice every month, but his Scotch generally got billed by the bottle. “A buck-fifty?”

     

Without comment, she raised the glass to her lips, tipped her head back, and emptied it like a woman who grew up around sailors. Mrs. Scully showed him remaining the olive and said, “Now I’m willing to throw it at him.”

 

She moved as if stand. Mulder thought she was joking, but he took her hand and pulled her back down. “This is The Plaza, Nurse Scully. We don’t throw drinks at people here; we slip our waiter a five to accidentally spill a drink on him.”

 

“He was awful to you, and he looked at me like I’m for sale by the pound. Make it a sawbuck and a bowl of mustard in his lap, Mr. Last-of-the-Gentlemen-Ballplayers. A big bowl.” 

 

“Done,” Mulder promised. He still held her hand. Her blue eyes twinkled mischievously. “I-I could get the valet to tell us which car he’s driving. We could flatten his tires,” Mulder offered. “Steal his hubcaps. Finish our fancy dinner with vandalism and petty larceny before the opera.”

 

“No, this is our big night out,” Nurse Scully reminded him. “I got eight hours of sleep last night, and I washed my hair this afternoon. I bought a new lipstick. New stockings. Em said I’m the prettiest mommy ever.”

 

“Emily has brilliant powers of observation.” Her hand felt small in his. He noticed the curves of her upper lip and the contrast of the dark lipstick against her pale skin.

 

She moistened her lips and leaned toward him. “Mulder, stop being such a gentleman and kiss me.”

 

“I-I- Okay,” Mulder stuttered before he kissed her. Kissed her back. Her lips felt warm, but her mouth and tongue cool. She tasted of expensive gin. His chair didn’t move, but he heard hers shift against the floor. Her hand touched his face and her fingertips stroked his cheekbone.

 

Normally, Mulder remembered details to the point Frohike called him “Spooky.” However, if Mulder’s had life depended on it, he couldn't recall what they ate for dinner or recount the plot of the opera they arrived late for, or even what language the performance was in.

 

He knew he had lipstick on his tuxedo collar and two ticket stubs in his trouser pocket after he dropped Dana off at her apartment that night.

 

For the rest of his life though, Mulder remembered the softness of her lips and the warmth of her hand and how her skin smelled. He remembered the outline of her shoulders and the hollow of her neck and how her face changed as he watched her watch the stage. She was magical. She was Christmas morning and the top of a roller coaster and new socks right from the store. Butterflies in his stomach and a soft wool blanket on a cold night.

 

Fate was fate. He bought opera tickets for the rest of the season.

 

*~*~*~*

 

William started Packer Collegiate Institute in second grade, when the judge granted the divorce but ordered Phoebe to live in New York rather than London between September and June. After William’s first month in school, his teacher asked for a meeting and - though surprised to see Mulder - told them tactfully Will didn’t read as well as the other students. Phoebe hadn't seemed concerned, but Mulder was. He hadn't realized their seven-year-old son couldn't read.

 

Mulder never set out to be a stranger to his son. But Mulder had to work, and Phoebe left, and baseball, and the war... And so he was.

 

"If it bothers you so much, you sort it out, Fox," Phoebe had informed him later that morning, years ago, as she left Mulder’s bedroom. Phoebe felt her conjugal rights continued despite the dissolution of their marriage, and Mulder hadn't yet figured out that was a bad, bad idea. She’d told him crisply, "If you're so keen to be a father, instead of criticizing me, you take care of something for once."

 

So Mulder had. Every Saturday during the school year, they read. At the public library, in Central Park, and curled up on the sofa in Mulder's old apartment: "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" and "Gulliver's Travels" and "The Jungle Book." He called Will after dinner every night, even game nights, even trans-Atlantic in the summertime, and Mulder read his copy of the book aloud while Will read along in his.

 

"Where are you, Daddy?" a little voice with a British accent would ask. "Which state?"

 

"Missouri," Mulder answered, and waited. He'd bought William a map of the United States to put in his bedroom at his mother's apartment, and Will would move a thumbtack to wherever his father played. "M-I-S-S-O-U-R-I," Mulder spelled out. "Not Mississippi; look for the R toward the end.  Missouri."

 

Mulder sat in the visiting team's locker room, dressed and warmed up for the game. He kept a picture of Will taped inside his locker: a dark-haired little boy with both upper front teeth missing and a sweet grin. No one else. Just Will.

 

"It's in the middle, I think. Above Texas. Beside all those square states," Mulder said after a moment. Directions weren't Mulder's strong suit, but he could picture the map in his head. "Do you see St. Louis? That's where I am."

 

"Oh," Will responded, finding it. "Is the sky gray there?"

 

"No. It's daylight outside, and it's not raining."

 

As a small boy, Will was fascinate Mulder could be someplace with a different time of day or different weather, yet a voice over the long-distance line.

 

"Missouri is gray on the map."

 

"No. The sky is blue unless it's raining. What color is New York on your map?"

 

"Blue, of course," Will answered as if Mulder was dim. "The sky is blue in New York."

 

"I promise the Missouri sky is not gray. Remember the river Huck Finn was on? The Mississippi river runs through St. Louis, Missouri. There's a zoo. Would you and Nanny Marie like to fly on an airplane, see the city with me, and come to the game on Saturday night?"

 

"I would, yes," Will said excitedly. "I'll bring my new baseball glove."

 

"All right. I'll have Mr. Byers call Mommy's lawyer. Do you have your book?"

 

That was Mulder’s first season playing since the war, but he batted .305. He had 102 hits so far, no errors, and 35 homeruns. If he wanted to tie up the locker room phone reading to his son, no one would stop him. The men would smirk behind his back, but they wouldn't stop him.

 

Mulder and Will had been reading “Journey to the Center of the Earth” that evening. Page 54. 

 

Mulder read while the rest of the team got ready for the game around him, rough-housing and joking. He read while the locker room quieted and emptied. He had his hat and glove tucked under his arm; all he had to do was walk out onto the field as the players were introduced. Eventually, at the last possible minute, an assistant coach signaled him.

 

"Daddy's gotta go to work, baby boy," he told Will. "You can listen on your radio, if you want."

 

"All right. Good luck, Daddy. Hit a homer," Will would tell him. William had loved American slang.

 

Mulder would mark his place in the novel, put on his cap, and go play baseball for the New York Yankees.

 

*~*~*~*

 

The handsome teenager who emerged from Packer, looked twice, and grinned around a mouthful of braces barely qualified as a boy anymore. Will had his mother's dark brown eyes, his father's quick wit, and neither of their athletic ability. William neared fifteen, and they’d had a lesson about shaving. A talk about where babies came from. A talk about girls. Will was a charmer; Mulder had given several lectures about nice girls and not nice girls.

 

"Father, dearest," William called sarcastically as he approached the car.

 

"Hello, baby boy," Mulder responded, smiling. "Want a lift?"

 

Will answered by tossing his book bag into the back seat, getting in, and slamming the passenger-side door so hard the window rattled.

 

"I'll take that as a 'yes.' How was your day?"

 

"Hiya yourself, Daddy-O," Will said more warmly. "Nice of you to make the scene, but Mother Dearest will be wicked frosted."

 

"Parles-tu anglais? S'il-tu plait?"

 

"Hello, Father. I am pleased to see you." Now Will spoke as if he narrated some British educational film. "Does Mother know you're here, because there will be trouble otherwise?"

 

"I wanted to talk to you. Byers called your mother. They worked something out, and she said I could pick you up today."

 

Mulder glanced in the rearview mirror and eased the car back onto the street. He drove slowly as children drifted out of the school and into waiting town cars and limousines.

 

"Mother's already wicked frosted," Will confessed. "Seeing me today cost you what? Blood?"

 

"You're worth blood," Mulder answered easily. "Do you want to get a milkshake?"

 

"I fancy something hot. There's the diner near the bridge."

 

"Whatever you want. How was your day?"

 

"Beastly. The whole month has been beastly." Will fiddled with the radio until he found a station he liked and Mulder didn't despise. "Beastly," he repeated, and settled back into the passenger seat. "And no, I don't care to tell you about it."

 

After a few minutes, they reached a quiet neighborhood of well-kept brownstones, their window boxes empty and the trees lining the street left bare by winter. William stared out the window as Mulder drove. "I'm about to run out of Brooklyn and into the East River, Will," Mulder mentioned, and his son pointed for him to turn right.

 

"Did you want to talk with me about why you had to marry Mother?" Will sounded carefully disinterested. "Why you left university to play baseball? Is that what you wanted to talk about, because I have been informed."

 

"No, that wasn't it," Mulder responded tightly. "But thank your mother for sharing that with our fourteen-year-old son."

 

"Almost fifteen." Will smiled the same tight smile as his father. "Mother Dearest has been on a rant. Safe to say, you shouldn't consider her one of your fans."

 

"Beastly," Mulder agreed.

 

Out of the blue, William ordered, "Honk the horn; I know this girl!"

 

Mulder felt his ulcer awaken as William leaned out the car window to flirt at the stoplight. Trying not to be perverse, Mulder checked his son's interest out of the corner of his eye: tall, buxom, brunette, seventeen, and bright as a burnt-out light bulb. Will had a type, and the type weighted heavily on a father's mind.

 

"William, sit down and roll up the window, please."

 

The boy threw himself down on the seat, sprawling long legs and big feet he hadn't quite grown into. He turned up the car's heater and commandeered the rearview mirror to check his hair. "Mother Dearest said to tell you she's taking me to London this summer. She says I can't stay with you for three months because you're an incompetent bum."

 

The incompetent bum who'd paid her bills since the late 1930's. Mulder turned the rearview mirror back to its proper position. "What are you supposed to say if she tells you to tell me things, Will?"

 

"To call you or Mr. Byers, and not to put me in the middle of the discussion." He made his 'this is stupid' face. "I don't listen to her. It's the same speech."

 

"We both love you."

 

"I am infinitely lovable," William agreed. "Inform the press."

 

Mulder exhaled through his nose. "Where is this diner? You did mean near the Brooklyn Bridge, didn't you, Will?"

 

William pointed left. Mulder turned the corner, and spotted the diner's awning down the block. Will was right; they had been there before.

 

"I don't have to go, do I?" William sounded carefully casual again. "I hate that priggish summer camp. Did you change your mind about me staying with you? I won't be any trouble."

 

Mulder inhaled a deep breath, keeping his temper in check. For the first summer in fourteen years, he wasn’t playing baseball or in the middle of a war, killing people. Of course Phoebe wanted to argue with Mulder about spending three months with their son, who she didn't spend time with, anyway. "You're staying with me, Will. This summer, I am unemployed and the world is our oyster."

 

"Good," his son responded, sounding relieved.

 

"Since she told you, if you want to ask me about your mother and me getting married - or divorced - I'll answer you. But I'd rather not, Will. No, we didn't make the best decisions and no, she and I didn't end in happily ever after, but I wanted you from the moment I knew about you, and I did whatever I needed to do to take care of you. I wouldn't take one moment of that back."

 

Will's calculated facade faded for a moment but returned. "That is disgustingly sweet," he pronounced haughtily. "Park here."

 

"It is," Mulder agreed.

 

*~*~*~*

 

"You're not to be drinking coffee," William informed him.

 

"I'm not drinking it; I'm smelling it." Mulder put the cup of coffee down to sign autographs for three teenage girls while Will rolled his eyes, looking like his mother. "Who was the girl on the corner? She seemed, uh, interesting."

 

"Why did you want to speak with me?" The boy poured so much sugar into his coffee Mulder grimaced. Will wanted to appear he enjoyed drinking coffee more than he actually enjoyed drinking coffee. "The woman in the newspaper pictures with you? Dana Scully. When did you become keen on opera?"

 

After the girls left, Mulder added more cream to his own cup. Even if he couldn't drink it, he liked having his coffee flavored correctly. "I hate opera; I like Dana and Dana likes opera. I'd like you to meet her, Will. And-" He swallowed. "I want to ask her to come to the Byers' house in Aspen for Christmas. So, yes, I want to talk with you about Dana Scully."

 

"You're serious about her?" 

 

Mulder focused on thoroughly stirring his coffee. "I'm serious."

 

"Would you marry her?"

 

"I like her much, and I think you'll like her too, but we haven't been dating long. She doesn't ski, though."

 

As if it was the next logical question, in the same falsely casual tone, the boy asked, “Is she expecting a baby?”

 

“No,” Mulder said. “No. It’s not like that, Will.”

 

"The paper says you've been seeing her a few months."

 

When Will was nine, Mulder moved close enough to Phoebe's building Will could ride his bicycle between their apartments. Saturday was their day together but, except for random weeks Phoebe wanted to fight about it, Mulder saw his son far more. Before Halloween, Will showed up at The Plaza if he needed help with homework or got lonely or hungry or bored or excited about something. Will had a private telephone line in his bedroom and Mulder paid the bill; his son could call him anywhere at any time. But, in the last six weeks, he rarely had. If Will did appear, he had a pack of teenage boys with him - all needing haircuts and all wearing leather jackets, denim jeans, and shirts in colors that should banned. His son suddenly had more friends at fourteen than Mulder had in his entire life, and was far too busy to speak to his father. William spent last Saturday letting his father buy him things and feed him and his hooligan buddies. The rest of the time Will seldom called, and he hadn't appeared in Mulder's apartment once. There was a deafening silence.

 

"We don't need to keep track of each other through the society page." Mulder tapped his spoon harder than necessary on the rim of his mug. The soda jerk appeared, apparently thinking Mulder wanted something. "You could stop by, you know. You do have a bedroom at my apartment. You could call or answer the telephone when I call you. We could talk to each other. I had to pick you up from school in order to see you alone and awake. I don't want to involve you until I'm serious about a woman, but I'm not the one doing the avoiding, Will."

 

Will stirred his coffee and didn't look up.

 

"I'm sorry, William," Mulder said quietly, once the counter boy left. "I had too much to drink, made a bad decision, and I never dreamed you'd show up."

 

"I should have knocked."

 

"You have a key, and she shouldn't have been in my apartment in the first place." It was the first time since that October afternoon either of them had mentioned it.

 

"Was she... The woman asleep with you- Was she Dana Scully?"

 

"No. No, she wasn't.”

 

“Dad, you have to be careful,” William advised him. 

 

Mulder couldn’t remember the young woman’s last name, let alone whether he’d been careful. Instead, he told his son, “Dana was the nurse at Our Lady of Mercy Hospital who patched up my head that night. Dana's a nice lady, Will. You won't see the other woman again. Her or anyone like her. Show up any time you like. I'll be sober and I'll be alone. Bet on it."

 

Will still stirred and considered.

 

"I miss talking with you," Mulder said honestly. "I don't know what you've had for dinner or what your homework is or if you hate your math teacher or you asked Judy Monroe to the dance. Are you still in love with Byers' secretary? I don't know."

 

"My love for Mr. Byers' secretary is eternal," Will insisted.

 

"I'm sure it is." Mulder lifted his mug and smelled the warm, rich brew. "I am sorry, Will," he said from behind his cup.

 

"Mother makes it-" William stopped. "I'm not a child. She was pretty, and you were... you'd had too much to drink," his son amended, though he'd formed his lips to say 'pissed.' "It was a mistake, and everyone makes mistakes." Will stirred his coffee again, watching the liquid swirl. "It's difficult to ring from Mother's flat, if she's there."

 

"Because I'm seeing Dana?"

 

Will nodded. 

 

Phoebe probably had plenty to say about Dana, but that wasn't the whole truth. Phoebe was seldom home to know what Will did and, as long as he was safe and happy, her housekeeper let Will do whatever he wanted. Which, previously, was to come see Mulder. "What about you, son? Are you upset I've been seeing someone? Or is it I've been seeing someone and didn't tell you?"

 

Will's cup of coffee got fully, thoughtfully stirred.

 

Mulder took a white bundle from his coat pocket and set it on the table. Will watched as Mulder folded back the clean handkerchief to reveal four delicate cookies stolen from the Bergdorf Goodman ladies’ dressing room: two mint green and two cream-colored with blue sugar crystals. "I'm telling you now, Will, and I'm telling you you'll like Dana."

 

Will tried a cookie. "Nice. Not what I expected, but nice. Did you buy a dress, or is Dana Scully is responsible for these biscuits?"

 

"I bought three dresses, but Dana's responsible for the cookies." He wished Will would stop referring to Dana by her full name and sounding as if he thought it might be an alias. "I bet they're stale. They're from Friday night, while you were at the movies. I wanted to give them to you this weekend, but you were busy with your friends and I didn’t have enough to share."

 

Will considered as he reached for a second cookie.

 

"Dana's not going to be what you're expecting, either."

 

His son didn't respond, so Mulder waited and tried not to fidget.

 

After a long pause, Will asked lightly, "So tell me what isn't in the papers about Dana Scully?"

 

"Well, she has auburn hair. You can't tell in black and white. Neither of us could tell anyway, but she does. She had a relative who was a magician. She can do some sleight of hand – hence the stolen cookies." He stirred his coffee again, trying to gauge the boy's reaction. "She has a daughter named 'Emily.' We've been keeping that out of the papers." 

 

Will nodded. His father placed one restriction on the press; Mulder did not allow photographs of his son or reporters hounding William. A reporter or photographer who forgot didn't stay employed long. "I would have a step-sister." Will said it as a fact, not a question. "How old?"

 

"Four. Emily just turned four. You'll meet her?" Mulder asked, and Will didn't answer. "This weekend?"

 

"Dana Scully's a widow?"

 

“I know her husband was an Army doctor in Korea, but she’s never said how he died. She doesn’t like to talk about it. I think Dana and Emily have been alone a long time, though."

 

"All right; I'll think about meeting her," Will conceded.

 

"Will you think about being nice to her, as well?"

 

William tipped his head back and forth noncommittally.

 

"And Aspen?"

 

"You are real gone," William said.

 

"What does that mean?"

 

Will grinned as he teased, "Father likes a girl."

 

Mulder sloshed coffee over the side of the mug. "Father does like a girl, Will. I really like this girl."

 

"Oh, bring her, Daddy-O. Bring them. We need more people who don't ski on a ski holiday."

 

*~*~*~*

 

"This can't possibly be the most interesting thing happening in New York City today," Mulder told the photographer poised a dozen feet away. "Spencer Tracy? Steve Allen? Yogi Berra? What's Berra doing today? He's always interesting."

 

Mulder had parked outside the hospital's employee entrance, waiting for Dana to finish her shift so he could surprise her. Several nurses exited. He'd gotten out of his car, buttoned up his coat, and leaned against the Cadillac's fender to make sure she noticed him.

 

The photographer appeared a few minutes ago and seemed determined to wait. "It's a public sidewalk. I got three sons to put through school, Mulder," he replied, shivering.

 

"I hope you freeze." Mulder pulled his hat lower on his forehead.

 

The door opened, and the photographer raised the camera, but lowered it. Mulder didn't move toward any of the women. Mulder gave him an unhappy look, and so at first didn't see the door swing open and Dana emerge alone. He planned on getting in front of her, but the photographer got there first and exploded a flashbulb a few feet from Dana Scully's face.

 

Dana flinched back, shielding her eyes.

 

"No," Mulder told the photographer sternly, going to Dana. "Back away."

 

"Mulder?" Dana still had one hand in the air to protect herself. "What's going on?"

 

"I'm giving you a ride home, and the AP has decided that's newsworthy."

 

The photographer backed away but raised the camera again as Mulder took her hand.

 

"No," Mulder repeated, stepping in front of Dana. "You're frightening her. Back off or find another job."

 

The camera lowered and the man apologized.

 

Dana exhaled. Still seeming shaken, she let go of Mulder’s hand to put on her gloves and wrap a scarf around her neck. A half-dozen other nurses also left the hospital, blocking the shot of Dana and Mulder. "That is unpleasant," she said.

 

"I know. I'm sorry. Let's get out of here."

 

She nodded and stepped forward to kiss him.

 

Mulder shook his head. "Wait."

 

He opened the passenger door for her and, after she was in, closed it, gave the photographer a last resentful look, and got in the driver's side. Mulder started the car, turned the heater up, and pulled away, leaving the AP photographer standing dejectedly on the sidewalk.

 

A few blocks later, Mulder stopped the car under the awning of a hotel, waved the valet away, and turned to Dana. "Now kiss me," he offered, and she did, lightly, seeming distracted.

 

Once they were on the road again, he said, "I've found a new career."

 

"Have you?"

 

He held her hand as he drove, his right and her left gloved hand resting on the center of the front seat. "I've decided I'm a chauffeur. I bumped into my agent at the bank and drove him uptown. I picked up Will after school, fed him, and drove him back to the city. Now I'm back in Brooklyn for you. I crisscross the island all day long, picking the people up and dropping the people off. I'm good at it. Haven't gotten lost once."

 

"You do seem to have a talent," she said, as if supplying a line.

 

"I can drive a truck, too," he said, but she didn't answer. "I am sorry about the photographer."

 

"I didn't sleep well, and he caught me off-guard. Does, does that happen often? When you're not expecting them?"

 

"It happens. I've told them my picture is on a Wheaties box and they don't need any more photos of me, but the photographers keep showing up."

 

"You are New York's most eligible bachelor."

 

"You've been reading the society page," Mulder responded, embarrassed.

 

"I read one." Dana turned toward him, tilting her head. "Are you on a Wheaties box?"

 

"Sadly, yes I am for a few more months," he admitted. "I don't like it, but the notoriety came with the job. Reporters take photos. People walk up and talk to me like they-"

 

"How do you know the smoking man? The man in The Oak Room that night, and who watched us last Friday?"

 

Everyone smoked, but Mulder knew which man she meant. "I don't know him. I thought you did."

 

"I don't think I do. I'm not sure," she responded.

 

They reached her neighborhood, and Mulder started to look for a parking space. Dana sat quietly and held his hand. She looked through the windshield without seeing anything, the same way Will had.

 

"The photographer upset you," he commented, sensing her uneasiness.

 

She smiled quickly and hollowly. "I had a long day."

 

"That seems to be going around. Is there anything I can do to improve it? Dinner? Pick up Emily and go for a drive?"

 

"I think I- I want to go home."

 

"I'm working on it." Mulder started a second lap around the block.

 

She worried her thumb against his hand for a while, and asked in a neutral tone that would have made Will proud, "What do you think about female doctors?"

 

"Why? Is there one at the hospital?"

 

"No."

 

"Why do you ask?"

 

"I'm just asking," she said. "Do you think women can be doctors?"

 

"Obviously, they can." Mulder wrinkled his forehead. "Is this one of those conversations where I end up sounding hopelessly old-fashioned? Because I've done that once today."

 

"I'm just asking," she repeated, her voice tinged with irritability.

 

He shrugged one shoulder. "If that's what she wants to do with her life instead of marrying and having a family, I don't see any harm in it. As a man, I wouldn't want a woman as my doctor, but I think some women would." He thought a moment. "Although male doctors deliver babies. It would definitely take some getting used to. In an emergency, though – if I'm sick or pain, I suppose I don't care if my doctor wears a skirt or trousers." That hadn't been the right answer, so he added, "There are lady doctors overseas. In England, especially. There was a lady surgeon at the field hospital. I remember seeing her. And, I was treated by some Army nurses in Italy who might as well have been doctors."

 

"You were wounded?"

 

Mulder let go of the steering wheel to gesture to his leg, above the knee. "A mortar in Sicily. There's still a scar."

 

"You were in Italy initially."

 

"I was. But I was back in action by D-Day."

 

She nodded. "Then France, then Germany," she said, repeating what he told her last month. "That was the worst of the fighting in Europe. You were drafted?"

 

"I enlisted," he answered succinctly.

 

"You were a baseball player. No exhibition games for the Army?"

 

"A couple during basic training and OCS. None once I hit Europe. Turns out, I have a talent for being a soldier as well as hitting a baseball and driving a truck," he said glibly. "So, I suppose mercenary would be a third career option."

 

Dana looked out the window again. "You don't like to talk about the war."

 

"No." Mulder worried his lower lip with his teeth. "There's the scar on my leg that shows, but others that don't show." He paused. "My mother's a Jew. Her family was in Germany when Hitler was elected. My grandmother, my aunt and her daughter - they were sent to one of the concentration camps." That was as much as he'd told anyone, even Byers. "My cousin was young, blonde, pretty. My aunt was a little older than I am now. Safta Fuch - my grandmother Fox... The Nazis burned the files, so no one will ever know what happened in the camp, but no one survived. Not my family, and not the guards. No, I don't like to talk about it."

 

She nodded silently. "My father and one of my brothers died in Pearl Harbor. Bill, my other brother, went ashore on leave that day. Dad and Charlie: their caskets came home with flags over them like it was an honor to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time."

 

After a few seconds, Mulder responded. "The Army has bulldozers. If thousands of bodies need to be buried, they call in a bulldozer and dig a mass grave. I could hear the bulldozer approaching as we left the death camp."

 

A memory flashed: the endless piles of gaunt, nude female corpses. The guard dogs snarling and barking inside their pen. Seeing a blonde head among the bodies, and just knowing. Looking down at his cousin Ayla’s skeletal shoulders and pregnant belly. And his aunt. And his grandmother. They’d died huddled together, trapped, in the dark. Mulder recalled turning toward the handful of young Nazi soldiers who’d surrendered the camp. The German officers had fled, but the guards remained. Mulder remembered reaching for his rifle.

 

Her hand squeezed his sympathetically. He pushed the cold rage to the back of his brain where it belonged. Mulder pulled her closer, interlaced their fingers, and rested his hand on his leg, over the old scar. He shouldn’t have her so close, but it felt comforting and she didn’t tell him to stop.

 

"Let's find another topic," he suggested.

 

She nodded in agreement. At the stop sign, he turned right and tried a new block in search of a parking space.

 

"If you won't let me take you out, what if I take Emily for ice cream and let you sleep a few hours?" he offered. "Fourteen years, and Will's still alive. He's even speaking to me today. I think I could amuse Emily for an evening."

 

"You're not responsible for my daughter, Mulder."

 

He bit his lip again. He wouldn't mind being responsible for her daughter or having her be responsible for Will.

 

"Thank you for picking me up," she said absently.

 

"You're welcome. Dana-"

 

"I told you it would be complicated - you and I seeing each other," she said. "I think that was an understatement."

 

He felt his stomach flip-flop. Something was wrong but he didn't know what. "I don't think it's impossibly complicated. It shouldn't be."

 

"No, it shouldn't be."

 

Mulder thought she would say something else, but she didn't.

 

"I talked with William today. He's excited to meet you and Emily," Mulder said, stretching the truth. "If it stays this cold, we could go ice skating on Saturday. Do you skate?"

 

"Not the last time I tried."

 

"And you don't ski at all?"

 

"No." She squeezed his hand. "Maybe you should take that Wheaties box and impress an athletic girl before we go any further," she said as if she teased him, though he didn't think she did. She looked down at their entwined fingers resting on his thigh. "Before it gets any more complicated."

 

"No, thank you. I don't like girls who can be impressed by Wheaties boxes and Cadillac ads. I like you - stubborn, enigmatic, skeptical, wonderful little thing you are."

 

He gave up on a parking space within a mile of her door and stopped the car in the street at the entrance to her apartment building. Emily watched from her babysitter's front window. The little girl waved with one hand as she held her stuffed Kitty with the other. Mulder waved back, shifted the car to park, and turned his attention to Dana. "How is it going to get more complicated?" he asked her quietly. "It's not you meeting Will. You'll like Will and he'll like you. What's wrong?"

 

She hadn't slept, and something bothered her - something besides the photographer, and something besides talking about the war or having her hand on his leg - but he couldn't fathom what.

 

"I don't expect love to be easy, but it shouldn't be impossible," he said, helping her stare through the windshield. "When it's real, it might be the hardest thing in the world, but it shouldn't be impossible."

 

"No, it shouldn't be."

 

"There will be photographers and reporters and rude fans. People will interrupt us at dinner. They will say unkind things. Professional men will talk to me like I'm dim. You're younger than I am and you're beautiful; society will assume things about your morals and motives that aren't true. I have a child, you have a child. I have an ex-wife we haven't even touched on yet." Mulder laid it on the line. "I've made mistakes; probably, so have you. Some of those mistakes still haunt me. You had a life before you met me, and I had a life before I met you. But I like my life better with you in it."

 

"So do I," was all Dana said, but Mulder knew she meant it.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Staying with the Byers family meant an explosion of domesticity neither Mulder nor Will knew what to do with. There were people in the kitchen and children running in and out of the house and a wait for the bathroom. In Mulder’s New York life, restaurants produced food, maids cleaned his apartment and clothing, and Mulder could sleep on the sofa in front of the television set anytime he liked. If William stayed at The Plaza, Mulder slept in the bed, shared the television set, and remembered not to run around in his shorts.

 

Susanne was a good hostess, and went out of her way to make Dana and Emily feel welcome. Mulder suspected Susanne was playing matchmaker, though Dana flying across the country to spend Christmas with him seemed a clue Dana liked him. After lunch, Susanne had rounded up her husband and all the willing children - which were Emily and the Byers' twins - and headed to the ski slopes. That left Mulder and Dana alone in the house with Will to keep them company. William kept them company by slouching on one of the beds in his and Mulder's room, listening to his records, and rereading the sex parts of “Brave New World.” “Fahrenheit 451,” to be read by the beginning of the spring term, remained untouched.

 

"Why do you go on ski vacations if neither of you ski?" Dana asked Mulder curiously, as he returned to the living room. They'd found half a bottle of leftover wine in the refrigerator, and Dana sipped her way through a second glass.

 

"I can ski, but it's painful. William can ski; he finds it beneath him at the moment."

 

From a room down the hall, William called haughtily, "I can hear you!"

 

"I don't know how over that music," Mulder called back, and Dana laughed.

 

Mulder tugged self-consciously at his borrowed black turtleneck as he returned to his place on the couch beside her. William had insisted Mulder couldn't wear an undershirt with it, and Mulder felt half-naked.

 

Dana shifted comfortably as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. In Mulder and William's room, the Hi-Fi played a Nat King Cole record. The fireplace crackled. A candle burned on the end table, smelling of vanilla. The Christmas tree lights twinkled. Mulder sipped his tea and envied her wine.

 

"What's with the snappy new outfit?" she asked.  

 

"It's Will's. I wanted something warmer. He called my sweater 'square' and said this makes me look like a beatnik." Mulder tilted his head to whisper in her ear. "I don't know what a beatnik is, except it's the opposite of square." He drew out the last word as he outlined the shape in the air as his son had a moment ago.

 

"Maybe it's a good thing."

 

"I've never shared a room with William," he confided to her quietly. "Not since he was an infant. He has his own bedroom at my apartment, of course, and I get adjoining hotel rooms when we travel. Here, I sleep in the room you're in. Now I have Tony Bennett and Dean Martin permanently etched into my brain, taking up space reserved for Ella Fitzgerald." William brought his 45's to Aspen and had been playing his Hi-Fi at top volume for the non-skiers for the last two hours. "I like him better without the music."

 

"You're not bunking with Emily and me, Mister."

 

"I wasn't presuming. I'm saying I love him, but if he keeps playing the same five records over and over, by tonight that Hi-Fi may meet with a tragic end.

 

She leaned toward the fireplace, retrieved a heavy brass poker, and pretended to hand it to him. "Go in soldier; I'll cover you."

 

"That would make me a bad father."

 

"It probably would." Her eyes danced mischievously as she replaced the poker on the rack. "I sabotaged my daughter's Bouncy Bee buzzing pull-along toy," Dana confessed. "It was Emily's favorite. She pulled it everywhere, and it bounced and buzzed. And buzzed. All day long for months, until I began to hate Mr. Bee. One afternoon during Emily’s nap, I performed a complete buzzer-ectomy on Mr. Bee and told Em his buzzer broke. Which it did, as I put it on the sidewalk and smashed it with a hammer."

 

He snorted in amusement as she paused for a sip of wine.

 

"She pulled Mr. Bee around after his surgery, but she left him for stuffed Kitty."

 

"You are devious."

 

"We both made it to her third birthday. Mr. Bee was not so fortunate."

 

"Hum. It would be unfortunate if the needle in that record player broke and I was able to sleep tonight. He doesn't have a spare needle and I can't imagine where we would find another one with the stores closed for the holiday."

 

She nodded her approval, and Mulder chuckled.

 

"Or there's the hammer option." He leaned closer. He pressed his lips to hers and placed a series of kisses down her jaw in time with the music. She tilted her head back, giving him access to her pale throat. "You are tipsy," he whispered. "This is shameful."

 

"It is." She let him continue kissing her neck and across her shoulder to the edge of her sweater. "Stop immediately. Think of the children."

 

"I'm thinking of children," he assured her saucily.

 

Mulder heard a man purposefully clearing his throat. John Byers and Susanne came in stomping snow from their boots. Susanne and the girls skied well; Byers strapped on skies, stood on the slopes, and tutted over his wife and daughters. The twins and Emily followed the adults into the house looking like Indian warriors with stripes of zinc oxide Dana painted on them against the winter sun.

 

Nat King Cole continued to sing over the Hi-Fi. Mulder watched Dana peel her daughter out of her snowsuit - Emily chattering at the same time as the Byers' girls - and mop up the puddles of melted snow they'd tracked in. Byers made several trips to the porch, carrying out everyone's boots, and Susanne returned from the back of the house carrying dry socks and towels.

 

Mulder sipped his tea and watched. 

 

Dana and Byers dried the girls off and had them change into dry clothes. Emily ran one way wearing panties, then back across the house in pink footie pajamas. Hot chocolate was promised and, in the kitchen, the stove burner whooshed on beneath a teakettle. Mulder heard pots clinking and Susanne discussing dinner with Byers, her lilting Polish accent sounding musical. William emerged, and all three girls turned their excitement toward him, recounting their adventures on the slope. Will squatted down and listened, grinning and forgetting the cool, disinterested persona he'd been trying to adopt.

 

This was normal. The American dream: this was Mulder’s shot at it.

 

He told Dana, "I like this," as she returned to sit beside him.

 

"I like this too," she agreed. Both of them spoke lightly, but not carelessly.

 

"Do you think we could do this?"

 

She picked up her nearly empty glass of red wine and studied it for a few seconds. "Neither of us ski."

 

"We'll buy a beach house," he promised. "Do you swim?"

 

"Not since I was a girl." She thought a moment. "My father was a Navy captain. I can pilot a boat."

 

"A sail boat?"

 

"Any boat."

 

"I used to row. In university," Mulder said, happy to have found common ground. "I’ll buy a lake house."

 

She sipped her wine and didn't argue with him.

 

*~*~*~*

 

People called Mulder observant and intuitive, but that the whole truth. In close proximity to some people, Mulder sensed if they were upset. In pain. Frightened. Excited, even. Years ago, he used to wake at night if the baby woke, even if William hadn’t cried. Mulder couldn’t change a diaper or warm a bottle, but he could tell Phoebe if William was wet or hungry or had an earache or a diaper pin sticking him.

 

Dana had nightmares. Mulder got as far as the doorway of her and Emily’s bedroom before he realized he couldn’t intrude to wake her. Even with her daughter in the same room, it wasn’t proper. The previous night, he’d watched her a few minutes. Dana never woke or cried out. He returned to his and Will’s room, not sure what else to do.

 

This time when Dana woke, Emily woke with her. Mulder got up and followed them to the kitchen.

 

"Are you all right?" he whispered.

 

Dana stood in the dark kitchen, holding Emily on her hip. Both of them wore pajamas; Dana wore white cotton, and Emily’s pajamas were pink with feet.

 

"Did you have another bad dream?"

 

Dana paused, scrutinizing him.

 

"I heard you last night."

 

She looked away. "I'm fine. I can't tell if Emily is coming down with something or if she's too tired, but she wanted something to drink. Why are you up?"

 

"My roomy continues to insist he can't sleep without the Hi-Fi playing. It was okay the first two hundred times, but the sofa started to call."

 

She shifted Emily to her other hip and made a sharp hammer motion with one hand.

 

Mulder changed the subject. "Emily is sick?"

 

"She's warm, but I think she's just had too much excitement this weekend.  Would you hold her while I find a cup?"

 

He stepped close to Dana and maneuvered Emily from her hip to his arms. Emily wrapped her arms around neck and rested her head against his chest. The warmth and trusting heaviness of her reminded him of how he used to hold Will.

 

He sensed a vague wrongness about Emily. Not tired or sick, but perhaps both. “I think she’s coming down with something,” Mulder said. “Keep an eye on her.”

 

Dana looked at him oddly, and Mulder didn’t pursue the conversation.

 

Instead, he carried Emily to the kitchen window to see the lights on the mountain. "Look out there, Em." He pointed. Hopefully, she wouldn't notice Santa and his attorney had visited the living room. "Santa must be getting close. He can't come until you're asleep."

 

Dana found the bottle of milk and poured a few swallows into a clean mug. The girl finished it. Mulder wiped her chin and asked, "Do you think you can sleep so Santa can come?" 

 

Emily felt she could sleep - with a story - so he carried her down the hall to Dana's room. Her blue eyes closed as he reached the 'moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow' part for the fourth time. By the time Santa had 'a little round belly' again, Emily was out cold.   

 

Dana smiled at Mulder from the doorway of the bedroom as he folded the blankets up to cover Emily. "You like being a father," she said softly.

 

He nodded, standing up from Emily's bed. "Between the war and baseball, I wasn't around when Will was this age. To me, he went from a toddler to being six-years-old. Six or seven was a good age, though. After the war, the major leagues played baseball at night. He'd come to my games but fall asleep in the stands with his nanny. There's an AP picture of me carrying him out of the stadium in my Yankees uniform. He had my cap on and his head on my shoulder, so you couldn't see his face, but I was furious they took it." Mulder raised his hands, still able to feel that little head heavy against his shoulder. "The photograph ran in Life Magazine, and Melvin Frohike said I got letters from women all over the country - half proposing marriage and the other half reminding me a child shouldn’t be at a baseball game at ten o'clock at night."

 

"You raised a good son."

 

"I tried. He's growing up. I love him, but I miss my little boy. Though, I have been informed he is no longer a little boy and, out of guilt, I indulge him and tolerate disrespect. I'm working on that." Mulder stepped behind her and put his arms around her shoulders as they watched Emily sleep. "You, however, do an amazing job with her. But-" He kissed the nape of her neck, searching with his lips until he found her pulse. He felt it quicken. "-you're amazing yourself."

 

Dana turned to face him. Mulder led her into the hallway in case Emily woke. "You keep me in line. You even get Will to be almost polite." He spoke between kisses, his mouth insisting hers open as her arms went around his neck.

 

His pajama bottoms were thin and she stood against him; Dana pulled back within a few seconds, his cue to stop. He was getting ‘fresh,’ as the teenagers called it. This time though, as she moved away, he moved closer, instinctively keeping the contact. 

 

"Mulder, this isn't right," she whispered.

 

"It is." He spoke with certainty, but shifted his body a few inches back. He rested his forehead against hers. "Marry me, Dana. This is right. I love you. More than that – something I don’t even have words for. I know it's soon, but it feels more right than anything I've ever felt in my life. Marry me."

 

Realizing what he'd said, Mulder punctuated his proposal by pulling her face to his again. He ran his fingers through her hair, and embraced her with a hungry intensity that probably frightened her. The feeling would frighten him if it wasn’t so wonderful, burning the way dry kindling became engulfed before anyone even realized it smoldered. Mulder felt her hands on his neck and back, pulling him closer. His left hand covered her breast. His right unbuttoned her top and slid inside and up her bare back. Her fingers moved down his chest, beneath his cotton T-shirt, and across the dark hair on his stomach. He pressed hard against her, his hands on her breast and her hip, beneath her panties and pajama bottoms. "Marry me, Dana," he whispered hoarsely. "Say yes."

 

"I can't," she managed to say breathlessly.

 

"Say yes." If she kept touching him, in about two seconds, he would find a comfortable horizontal surface, strip off those prim pajamas - and then he would have to marry her. “Say it.”

 

"I can't." She pulled away forcefully. "Not like this, Mulder. I can't," she insisted hoarsely.

 

He moved back, trying to catch his breath. "Not like this." Not in someone else's house, on some else's sofa, like they were teenagers. She was a nice girl. He wanted her in their house in their bed with their children asleep down the hall. "Sorry. Sorry, Dana. I'm sorry."

 

She wrapped her white cotton top around her like a robe and leaned back against the wall of the hallway. She trembled; he felt her insides quaking. He shouldn’t have touched her. She’d been married, but Mulder sensed Dana wasn’t as bold or experienced as she tried to appear. He could attest it only took once to make a baby, though.

 

"Dana, look at me." She glanced up, sniffing. "I mean it. I’m not just looking for a good time. Say yes. Not to tonight, but to forever."

 

"I can't," she repeated earnestly. "You deserve a normal life."

 

He stared down at her in disbelief. "Have you seen my life? You’re the only normal thing about my life."

 

Down the hall, his grandmother's engagement ring sat in a little box under the Christmas tree, resized and tucked behind wrapped boxes of toys and sweaters. There was also a blue box from Tiffany's - delicate diamond and pearl earrings - the Insecurity Fairy's fallback plan.

 

"Marry me, Dana," he asked again, but she wouldn’t look at him.

 

*~*~*~*

 

The moment Mulder closed the bedroom door, William’s voice whispered earnestly in the darkness, "What did she say?"

 

Mulder stopped. The Hi-Fi had silenced. William lay in bed, but propped up on one elbow and focused intently on his father.

 

"Did you hear us?" Mulder whispered back. "Were you eavesdropping?"

 

"No," William lied. "Did you ask her? What did Mrs. Scully say?"

 

Mulder lay back with his feet still on the floor on one side of the bed as his head hung back off the other. He took one of those deep, calming breaths his doctor harped about. Mulder had a fastball hit him square in the chest once, and the pain felt exactly the same. The team doctor told him to take deep breaths then too, but it never helped one damn bit.

 

"Go to sleep, Will," he commanded.

 

"Tell me what Mrs. Scully said, Daddy-O," the boy insisted.

 

"She said 'no.'"

 

“No? How could she say ‘no’? Did you say what I told you to say?”

 

“I’m not discussing this with you. Go to sleep.” 

 

“Dad-”

 

“Now!” Mulder barked.

 

William flopped down. The boy remained silent, but Mulder sensed his misery, like he felt Dana’s ache from the bedroom down the hallway.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Emily amused herself in the front seat between Mulder and Dana by having little conversations with her new Mr. Potato Head as they drove back from the airport. Will sprawled across the backseat and made loud, disappointed sighing noises, as he had for the last six hours.

 

Mulder, trying not to lose his temper with the rush of holiday drivers as he navigated traffic, asked his son for the twentieth time, "Will, you didn't expect me to buy you a car, did you? Next year, once you're old enough to drive, I'll buy you a car."

 

The reply was another sigh and some muttering.

 

"I'll teach you to drive this summer, and you can pick out a car for next Christmas." Mulder braked to avoid a pack of shoppers delirious with fresh kill from Macy's. He threw out an arm to stop Emily from hitting the dash. "I'm not buying you a car until you're old enough to drive a car. This is ridiculous!"

 

"Mother will buy it for me!" Will retorted angrily.

 

Phoebe wouldn’t buy their son a car, but Mulder managed to keep his mouth shut. His knuckles were white as he gripped the steering wheel, though. Mulder never subscribed to the ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’ approach, but he began to understand why his own father had backhanded Mulder as a teenager a few times.

 

"I hate you!" his son shouted. Will opened the door as Mulder waited for a light to change.

 

"Don't you dare get out here. It's another three blocks," Mulder ordered, as though Will hadn't spent a decade of his life in Manhattan and didn't know.

 

"Since I don't have a car, I'll walk!" Will punctuated his dramatic protest by slamming the door and stalking off.

 

Mulder rolled down his window and yelled, "William!" His son turned up the collar on his leather jacket and kept walking.  

 

As Dana reached down to retrieve Mr. Potato Head's plastic lips from the floorboards for Emily, Dana gave him a look between sympathetic and amused. "Why would anyone think you 'indulge him and tolerate disrespect' from that boy?" she teased Mulder. "He didn't notice there wasn't a large, car-shaped package under the tree on Christmas Eve?"

 

"Maybe he thought Santa would tow it behind the sleigh and park it outside. Good Lord." Mulder watched Will's head bob through the crowd. "What am I supposed to do with him?

 

"Give him a car key and an I.O.U. redeemable on his sixteenth birthday. He's been talking about a Thunderbird. Make it conditional on getting his license. Studying. Minding his manners. He knows he'll get the car and he can brag, but you can stall until he should be driving."

 

"That is an excellent idea. How do you know that?”

 

“If you do all your shopping with a small child, you either learn a few tricks or end up screaming at her in the middle of Woolworth’s.”

 

Mulder nodded thoughtfully. “I wonder how I get a key for next year's model? I could call Ford headquarters, I guess. After the holidays."

 

Dana helped Emily climb over the seat into the back so she could stretch out after their long flight. "You try so hard, Mulder."

 

"I guess I do," Mulder said. He pulled into a space in front of Phoebe's building to wait and make sure Will arrived safely. The kid should have one parent who tried to make him happy.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder glanced in the rearview mirror to check Emily was asleep under his coat in the backseat. The little girl’s eyes remained closed. He worried the words around his head and said quietly, before he lost his nerve, "We had to get married."

 

Dana watched the river as they sat in traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge. She turned her head to look at Mulder.

 

"I was thinking on the plane home you don't know much about me, and maybe that's why you don’t want to get married yet. My ex-wife: that story’s a good place to start."

 

Mulder kept both hands on the wheel and focused on the car in front of him, but he felt Dana watching him.

 

He cleared his throat. "I was a university student. I had too much to drink, and Phoebe was working at the pub that night. I'd talked with her, but she wasn't my girlfriend. I was twenty-three; I'd never-" He stopped, took a breath, and tried for the less explicit version. "I took Phoebe home to meet my parents after we were married, but they were mortified. 'Oxford' my mother kept saying. How could I have thrown away Oxford? It was the last straw for my father. I had a sister who disappeared, and he blamed me. We never found out what happened to Samantha but it was my fault, according to Vater. Marrying Phoebe was my final mistake in his book. My mother has seen Will once, but my father died last year without ever meeting him. Vater never acknowledged his namesake existed and, to him, I stopped existing, too. Phoebe's pretty and she can be fun, but she's not- She had a reputation. My parents, my friends, my professors - everyone thought I should have walked away."

 

Dana asked slowly, "Oxford University in England?"

 

He nodded. "I'd finished my four-year, and I was a graduate student."

 

"Why didn't you walk away? Provide for the baby, if it was yours, but..."

 

A valid question; nice boys didn't marry bad girls. Mulder shrugged, moving the confession along without admitting how dazzled he'd been at having a family of his own. A normal family, where the mother spoke to the children and the father came home and stayed sober at night. Mulder never doubted he fathered Phoebe’s baby. He just knew. He'd looked at Phoebe on that stormy summer afternoon and knew she was pregnant, and he was the father.

 

"I’d planned to work part-time and finish school that fall - spring at the latest. The FBI offered me a job, but I had to graduate. Once my father refused to help, I couldn't pay my tuition let alone take care of a wife with a baby coming. The war was brewing in England, so I took Phoebe and came home again - to New York instead of Boston so my parents wouldn't be embarrassed in front of their society friends. Will came. In the middle of winter, in the Lower East Side tenements. We stayed dirt poor and cold, and the baby cried all the time and I worked all the time, and Phoebe was miserable. When Will was a few months old, Phoebe couldn't- She couldn’t do it anymore. She took Will to England and stayed with her mother while I traveled with the ball club. For a while, I spent the off-season in London, thinking we could work things out, but..."

 

Mulder shook his head.

 

"We needed more in common than a baby and how we got the baby,” he said tactfully. “But I didn't want to believe it. The war started, and I wanted them back in the States. The Nazis bombed London, but I couldn’t reason with Phoebe. So I insisted. She was my wife and he was my two-year-old son, and the three of us were getting on a plane. My approach ended in an ugly scene, me flying home alone, Phoebe asking for a divorce, and me not seeing Will again until he was six. William and Phoebe stayed in England. I spent the war shooting anything German that moved before it could get to my son, and sure things would work out with Phoebe because I couldn't conceive of being divorced. Nice boys don't get divorced. But nice boys don't get drunk and go home with a waitress they barely know, either."

 

He took a nervous breath. 

 

"I ended up a baseball player by chance. I hadn't played since high school. I liked ball, and I was good at it, but I wanted to be a criminal psychologist, not a ball player. The new PONY league had tryouts, we needed money, and baseball paid more than loading trucks at the docks. Turns out, I’m really good at baseball. I spent a month playing Class A ball before the Yankees called me up to the big league. I know you don’t know baseball, but I was their star hitter and center-fielder until, like the smoking man said in the restaurant, I couldn't keep up with the nineteen-year-olds. I can throw and bat, but my knees have had too much abuse over the years and getting shot in Italy didn't help. That's why I don't ski anymore. Or run; I used to run. After I retired, though... I felt cheated. Like I made a deal with the Devil and didn’t like the end result. I wanted to drink and feel sorry for myself rather than to dust myself off and figure out what to do with the rest of my life. I made some bad decisions, my decisions started affecting Will, and I sobered up. Then I met you."

 

A long silence filled Mulder’s Cadillac as impatient horns blared mindlessly around them on the bridge: drivers furious at having their lives interrupted.

 

"End of the story, Dana. Pretty much the whole story except for the really ugly parts. Please don't get out of the car and start walking. We're still a long way from your apartment and it's cold."

 

To his surprise, he saw tears streaming down her face.

 

"Dana?"

 

"Was it worth it? Not walking away? Not playing by everyone's rules?"

 

Mulder pulled her across the seat so she sat beside him. He stroked her cheek anxiously with his fingertips. "I wanted my son to have a father. I won't lie and say it was easy, but how can I miss a life I'll never know? If I had told Phoebe tough luck, finished school, and gone to work for Hoover, I would never have known Will. I wanted to work for the FBI - catch the bad guys, save the world. I never wanted to be a soldier, but when the bad guys threatened my family, I didn't think twice about killing them. I never wanted to be a professional baseball player, but I heard sixty-seven thousand fans cheering as I walked up to bat for the final game of the World Series a few months ago. I hit my three hundred and sixty-first - and last - homerun, and Will saw it. We stayed up too late on a school night and went for strawberry milkshakes after the game. Was it the life I envisioned at twenty-two? No. But yes, I think it was worth it."

 

*~*~*~*

 

Dana was naïve enough to think she was subtle. She drank three glasses of champagne in a row and carried a fourth. The New Year’s party continued on the roof of The Plaza Hotel, but Dana said she felt cold. Even with his tuxedo jacket around her. Even near a heater. Even with most of a bottle of champagne in her. She requested they go somewhere warmer. Mulder suggested the ballroom, but Dana asked, “Does your apartment have windows?”

 

“My apartment has windows and a terrace,” Mulder said. “Your choice.”

 

She smiled her mysterious smile at him.

 

Dana swayed against him in her high heels as they stepped off the elevator. Mulder kept his arm around her. If she claimed she felt too warm and asked him to take her to Hell, he'd graciously accept that invitation, as well. Father liked a girl, Will. Father really, really liked this girl. Although the last time Mulder had made love to a woman while sober, Will was an infant. A small infant.

 

In the hallway outside his apartment door, Mulder rested both hands on her waist, stroking the satin fabric of her dress with his thumbs. The bodice pushed her breasts high, and remained tight down to a tiny waist before the skirt blossomed into yards of luxurious, dark blue satin.

 

"That's a pretty dress." Mulder ran his hands up the bodice, and across and down her soft, bare shoulders.

 

"Thank you. I found on my doorstep. It belongs to someone named 'Christian Dior.’ There's a label in it, but Bergdorf Goodman wouldn't let me give it back."

 

"His loss; my gain." He kissed her. Her lips tasted like champagne, and parted, letting him in. He lowered his head and kissed between her breasts. Her throat, her shoulder. Her skin felt like velvet, and she wore some exotic perfume designed to bypass a man’s reason.

 

No more nurses' uniforms. No more night shifts or blood and vomit on her clothes or fourth floor walk-up apartments. No more apartments at all, even at The Plaza. Mulder wanted a house and a dog and a family, and he wanted them with her.

 

"You're sure?" he asked with his face close to hers. "You're tipsy. Is this private party going to seem like a good idea in the morning?”

 

"The Plaza’s party is private. We had to show them your invitation," Dana said, missing the euphemism and sounding definitively tipsy.

 

Mulder chuckled and led her inside.

 

With all but a single lamp off, the foyer and living room were shadowy. Across the room, a Christmas tree still stood beside the fireplace, its white lights glowing softly. There had been a menorah earlier in the month for Chanukah. Will wasn't interested in his Jewish heritage so much as he liked eight days of presents. William slept at his mother’s apartment tonight, though.

 

Mulder led Dana past the dining room and rarely-used kitchen, down the hall, past Will's room, and into his own bedroom. Dana looked around the dim room, set her glass of champagne on his nightstand, and turned toward him uncertainly. He put one hand on the curve of her waist, leaned down to kiss her, and they never made it to his terrace to watch the fireworks.

 

He wanted to touch her everywhere at once: her breasts, her hips, her face, her shoulders. He felt her responding, her pulse quickening, her breaths coming faster. Her trepidation, but also the raw want. The passion.

 

"Last week, you told me 'no,'" he said softly, into her neck. He ran his fingers through her hair. "I'm sensing you've changed your mind."

 

She nodded, blushing the color of virtue. As he kissed her, she rested one hand on his chest, over his heart. He found the tab of the zipper on her dress and unzipped it down her back. She moved and the expensive blue dress fell to the floor with a sigh. Underneath, she wore a little black strapless bra and panties and a wide garter belt that nipped her waist and held up her stockings. She still wore black stiletto heels.

 

He stepped back to appreciate her. Those gaudy pin-up girls in the magazines he kept confiscating from Will - they had nothing on Dana Scully. The innocence and honesty in her sexiness made his id lick its lips. One-handed, Mulder untied his bow tie. She came to him and started undoing the buttons of his shirt. He hadn't had any champagne, but he felt drunk himself.

 

"Do I go undress?" she asked him, and stepped back toward the bathroom.

 

"I took a correspondence course; I know how brassieres and garters work," he said. "You are beautiful. Come here."

 

"You aren't so shabby yourself," she whispered back.

 

Mulder sat on the end of the bed and guided her to sit facing him. He cupped the back of her head with his hand and pressed his mouth to hers. She slid his shirt off, and he pulled back long enough to slip his T-shirt over his head. He toed off his shoes and leaned her back across the blankets, her body underneath his. His bare abdomen was against hers, and her lacy brassier rubbed his chest. She shifted her hips, and he heard one of her high heels, then the other fall to the floor. He felt a silk-stocking-covered foot slide under his trouser leg and up the back of his calf.

 

The world swirled in an explosion of colors with her at the center. Outside his bedroom windows, the first fireworks exploded over Central Park. It was midnight. 1954.

 

Mulder grazed his nose down the curve of her ear and whispered huskily, "You didn't say you'd marry me yet."

 

Her head shook 'no,' barely moving.

 

“I wanna hear you say it.” He pushed up on his elbow as he ran his fingertips over the swell at the top of her breast. He realized, "You're not saying you'll marry me, are you?"

 

"No," she said softly.

 

He continued stroking his fingers across her chest. "Why are you here?"

 

"I think you know."

 

"I love you."

 

"Make love to me," she whispered.

 

Through some superhuman effort, Mulder answered, "No.” He shook his head. “No, Dana," he repeated with more conviction. He shifted away from her. "I don’t want to wake up tomorrow knowing we've done something wrong. You’re drunk. This is- This is a bad idea."

 

The fireworks continued and the band on the roof played. With each explosion, cymbals crashed and the crowd at the party cheered. Through the window, blue and yellow light played across the white bedspread and their bare skin. As he looked down at Dana, a hurt crease appeared between her eyebrows.

 

"You’re a nice girl,” he said. “I love you; I want to marry you. I don’t just want to- Not with you. Is that all you want with me?"

 

"No." She shook her head. Her hair rustled against the bedspread. "Of course not."

 

"What do you want?  What is it?" he whispered hoarsely. "I-I can stay sober, Dana. There won’t be other women. Is it that my mother's Jewish? I'm older than you? I'm divorced? I'm not a doctor or a lawyer? Will? What is it about me you don't want?" he demanded.

 

Her chin started to quiver.

 

He didn’t want to make her cry; he wanted her to answer. "What, Dana?" he repeated shakily. "Tell me."

 

"Nothing." She put her hands on either side of his face as she looked up at him. "There's nothing about you I don't want. Make love to me."

 

Mulder wanted to believe her, and at that instant he did. He believed her with every cell in his conscious mind, but also with the little voice in his head that whispered things like 'here comes the fastball' and 'Dana's having a bad dream' and 'check the boxcars.'

 

"I don't understand." He loved her, and he felt the ferocity and certainty of her love for him. “Why are you doing this?”

 

Her breath in his ear made his belly shiver as she whispered, “Maybe I’m not a nice girl.”

 

The universe began tumbling again, a dizzying kaleidoscope of color and sounds, sensations and smells. Nothing was stable or certain except she loved him. Her mouth opened under his: hungry, inviting, passionate. He unfastened the little brassier and stripped it off. The stockings and garter belt joined it beside his bed. Dana’s hair was tousled and her face flushed, and she did nothing to stop him. Mulder touched her again – her bare breasts, her backside. Between her legs, through her panties, making her gasp. Beneath her panties: a warm tangle of soft hair, slick and hot at the core. He slid her panties off and reached to unfasten his tuxedo trousers. He knew it was wrong, but he didn’t stop. So maybe he wasn’t a nice boy.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Ten seconds after climax, since his brain wasn’t fogged in by half a bottle of Scotch, Mulder had to think again. Having just made love to a beautiful woman who’d wanted him, embraced him, let him love her deeply, slowly until he couldn’t wait any longer- Who’d, he was certain, climaxed a second time, gasping his name and begging him not to stop and so he hadn’t- That bought him a few extra seconds.

 

His shoulders hit the mattress. Mulder tipped his head back until his neck arched painfully. He covered his face with his hands and exhaled a long, shaky breath. As his heartbeat slowed, Mulder didn't breathe for a while. The warmth in his groin and stomach faded and got replaced by a dull ache. Beside him, Dana lay very, very quiet and still.

 

Eventually, Mulder had to inhale. Uncovering his face, he found the edge of a sheet and pulled it over both of them. The fabric felt cool as it settled against his damp skin. He lay facing her with his head on his folded arm. They looked at each other in the darkness. She lay on her side as well, with one arm folded beneath a pillow and her other hand resting low on her belly. Her face still looked flushed and, in the moonlight, her bare breasts glowed and her tousled hair shimmered.

 

He looked at the hand on her abdomen, and reached down, covering her hand with his. She ached; he felt it. "Okay?" he asked worriedly. “Did I-”

 

"I'll be okay," she said softly, reassuring him. "Are you okay?"

 

"No," he mouthed honestly.

 

"I did something wrong?"

 

"I think I may have some internal hemorrhaging, Nurse Scully." His heart, his pride, his conscience - the sum of them took a direct blow.

 

Mulder didn't ask Dana to marry him again because he knew she'd refuse.

 

She looked so sad he pulled her to his chest and cupped her head with his hand protectively. "I love you," he whispered, his voice hoarse. "I don't know what else to say to you."

 

Her head nodded against his shoulder. Mulder reached down again and found the edge of a blanket. He pulled the blanket up and tucked it around her, and replaced his hand on the back of her head. A few floors above them, the New Year's party continued, as did the fireworks outside the big windows.

 

“That was nice?” she asked in a quiet voice. “For you?”

 

“Are you serious? Yes, that was nice,” he assured Dana. “Nice for you too, I think.”

 

She didn’t answer.

     

“Dana-”

 

"I should go," she said, and started to untangle her body from his.

 

He pushed up on his elbows, dumbfounded. “No,” he managed to say. “You don’t do that and get up and leave.”

 

She blinked. “Mulder, I can’t stay. Everyone saw us leave the party. I have a little girl. People will talk.”

 

“To hell with them. Let them talk. I don’t want to love you on someone’s damn timeclock.” A second later, Mulder flopped down and covered his face with his hands again, pressing his palms hard against his eyes. “I’m sorry, Dana. I don’t understand.”

 

He felt her lay down beside him. Her head rested on his shoulder, and her hand stroked his chest. Mulder opened his eyes.

 

“You’re sorry you did this.” He felt her regret. He also sensed finality. Once Dana walked out of his apartment and away from him, she didn’t plan to return. “I did what you asked, and you’re sorry.”

 

“Mulder, I’m not. I thought- I don’t know what I thought.”

 

As he held her, he stared past the fireworks exploding outside. "Do you not love me?"

 

Dana shifted closer to him. Her breath warmed the skin at the base of his throat as she toyed with the hair on his chest. "Of course I love you."

 

Mulder took a slow breath and watched the high ceiling. Another slow breath.

 

Cursing, he grabbed the alarm clock from his nightstand and hurled it across the bedroom. Melvin Frohike claimed Mulder had a million-dollar right arm; the clock crashed into the wall and left a dent in the plaster.

 

Dana sat up, naked, facing him. “I’ve never been married,” she blurted out. “I’m not a widow.”

 

He stared at her with his mouth open.

 

"I did all the right things. I went to the home for unwed mothers. I didn't have a choice. The Army discharged me and I couldn't find a job in that condition. I certainly couldn't go home to my mother. When Emily came though, I couldn't leave her. I never lied to you; I never lied to anyone,” she promised him. “John was a doctor, and he did die in Korea – but he died months before I joined the Nurses Corp. He wasn’t her father. People assume I'm a widow, and it's easier for Emily to let them assume."

 

Mulder swallowed. "Where is her father?"

 

"I don't know."

 

“Why didn't he marry you?"

 

"It doesn't matter."

 

“It does matter. I-I don’t care, and Frohike can fix this. He says I’m too boring for his talents, but he does have to know what happened.” Dana started to get up, but Mulder grabbed her wrist. “No. What happened? Who is Emily's father?”

 

She tried to pull her arm back. “Let go of me, Mulder.”

 

“Was he married? Did one of the officers force-"

 

"I don't know who her father is," she blurted out. "There was no one to marry because I have no idea who her father is."

 

Mulder loosened his hand, and she jerked her wrist free.

 

Bolting out of bed, Dana wrapped the sheet around her, picked up her dress from the floor, and ran to the bathroom. After the door closed, Mulder heard her lock it.

 

He stared at the door. She wasn’t like that. She was human and naïve and she didn't hold her alcohol well. Sometimes things happened.

 

By the time Dana emerged, hurriedly dressed, he'd pulled on his tuxedo trousers and found his grandmother's ring in the pocket where he put it earlier, just in case. He sat at the bottom of the bed, pressing his face into his hands.

 

"Mulder, I'm sorry," he heard her say.

 

"Tell me the truth." He didn’t look up. "Whatever the truth is."

 

There was a pause before her voice said, "Instead of sending me overseas, the Army assigned me to an underground base in the middle of the Nevada desert. They were doing secret experiments with technology like I'd never seen, but I felt proud to do my part. Except my part was a joke. I'm a trauma nurse, but they had me maintaining medical records and storing tissue samples. I never laid a finger on a patient because there weren’t patients. Just files and tissue samples. Within a few months I started getting sick and fainting, and the Army doctor said I was going to have a baby. Of the dozen young nurses and secretaries and clerks on the base, all of us found out we were expecting. I can't speak for the others, but I didn't do anything to get that way. They gave up their babies and I didn't. I couldn't, even though the men from the base tried to insist."

 

With his feet still on the floor, Mulder flopped back on the bed. He lay on the fitted sheet; most of the covers remained on the rug. "Women do not magically get in trouble. People make mistakes. There is no secret base where the government uses women as broodmares. This is the United States, for God's sake - not Nazi Germany. We don’t do that. I fought for our country. I got shot for our country. I've met the president! There is no illegitimate baby conspiracy, honey.” He pushed up on his elbows. “Maybe you don't remember. Maybe it was so awful you can't let yourself remember."

 

"Mulder, I know what I know. John had died in Korea. He was twenty-eight years old and brilliant and brave, and he loved me, and he died. I was heartbroken. I didn't so much as look at another man. No one drugged me, no one got me drunk, and no one forced me. I'm not stupid and I'm not a liar. I don't expect you to believe me. I don't expect you to speak to me if you pass me on the street, but you asked for the truth."

 

"You aren't the Virgin Mary, Dana," he insisted angrily, sitting up. "Something happened."

 

Her chest rose and fell. She reached down and hurriedly guided her feet into her stiletto heels. "Of course. It sounds ridiculous, I know. Of course, I would make up that story instead of picking a dead husband off a soldier's tombstone.” She snatched up her little purse. “You'll believe ghosts haunt The Plaza's subbasement and dead Royal Air Force pilots tour Times Square. You think President Lincoln's funeral train might still be traveling back and forth in Hudson Valley Railroad purgatory, but you won't believe me. I let into my daughter’s life. I share your surreal life and your bed-”

 

“At your request,” Mulder countered loudly. “What did you expect me to do? Say no? What would you have thought of me?”

 

She stood still, seeming stunned.

 

He told her angrily, “All I did was fall in love with you. Want to marry you. Let you into my son’s life. Tell you the truth – about Phoebe, about Will. You instigated this-” He flung his hands out, gesturing to his bedroom. “You go to bed with me, and you tell me some insane story, and you rip my heart out.”

 

She ran her fingers through her hair. Her chin quivered and her eyes glistened. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I was selfish. I love you; I wanted to know-” she began in a strangled voice. “I’m sorry.”

 

Mulder looked away before he started crying with her. "Dana- Don't go. I don't care what happened, don't leave. I can fix this."

 

Unsteady high heels clicked rapidly across his apartment floor. His front door opened and closed. Dana’s glass of champagne remained on the nightstand. As Mulder sat shaking on the edge of the rumpled bed, the party ringing in 1954 continued around him.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder hung up the telephone and told himself he’d achieved an appropriate compromise. He called room service for a breakfast that didn't include vodka in his orange juice, but he wanted coffee, damn it. He deserved coffee.

 

He should shower. Mulder avoided it, not wanting to wash the traces of her away. Shower, and go after her. Stand in the street outside her apartment building and throw pebbles at the window until she came out if he had to, but he would make this right.

 

Mulder loved outlandish stories, but eight hours ago he would have said women did not miraculously conceive.

 

Dana's idea of lovemaking combined nursing textbooks, romantic movies, and good instincts - but no practical experience. After the part where movies faded to black, she’d followed his lead, but she didn’t quite know her line. The more Mulder thought about it, the more the wheels started to turn.

 

About two in the morning he called Frohike, King of Paranoia, repeating what Dana said. By six, Frohike called back excitedly to report a top secret part of Nellis Air Force Base existed in Nevada. Area 51. Near where a UFO crashed a few years ago, Frohike said, causing Mulder to laugh. Aliens; aliens were science fiction.

 

Frohike had a source: a civilian on the base willing to talk, for the right price. It all sounded rather cloak and dagger to Mulder, but according to the source, the government had files to do with vaccinations for anyone Frohike thought to ask about: Dana, Emily, Frohike’s sister. Judy Garland. Ed Sullivan. The President, Hoover. Anyone.

 

“Everyone gets vaccinated, Frohike. Polio. Smallpox. Of course there are records. How much of my money did you wire this source?”

 

Frohike had countered with, “Doctors and public health departments keep vaccination records, not nurses on a top secret military base.”

 

More importantly - and rationally – Frohike’s source reported a home for unwed mothers located conveniently close to the base. He still worked the phones, Frohike told Mulder, but Frohike couldn't find any record of those unwanted children ever being adopted. They vanished.

 

"You mean she's telling me the truth?” Mulder had asked. “How in the world do you get a woman to have a baby without, uh-"

 

Frohike enlightened him until Mulder asked him to stop out of basic decency. The short version was: yes, during the right time of the month, a doctor could inseminate a woman during what she might assume was a routine physical examination.

 

"But why? Why create illegitimate children? There's no shortage of them."

 

Continuing the Nazi experiments, Frohike speculated. Eugenics. An attempt to create a superior human. All the mothers were bright, attractive, healthy young women who should have been shipped overseas.

 

"There's something else, Mulder. My source found a file with your name. Yours and Samantha's, both."

 

"I'm not adopted," Mulder replied. "Neither of us are; I remember Sam being born. The State Department transferred my father again and we moved back to Boston. I can remember my mother packing by herself while she was big with Samantha."

 

"No, not under the adoption or vaccination records. As two of the people they tracked. There are other names: athletes, artists, scientists, and professors. A certain debonair sports agent. Anyone outstanding in their field. Didn't you ever wonder how you could take up professional baseball at twenty-three years old and make $25,000 your second season? Maybe you're genetically predisposed to the game."

 

"Frohike," Mulder had asked, "Have you been into the Scotch? Why in the hell would anyone want to breed ballplayers?"

 

"Maybe you weren't supposed to be a baseball player."

 

That took a full hour to digest. Mulder placed a call to John Byers - still on vacation in Aspen and sound asleep - and ordered him to get his hands on these records: Emily, Samantha, Dana, him. Mulder wanted to know what the government was doing to people. He'd heard his attorney crack his neck, yawn, and ask from whom exactly he was supposed to subpoena these documents?

 

"Try Hoover," Mulder told Byers. "Maybe Eisenhower. Or the Martians. Just get them."

 

Someone entered his apartment as he hung up the telephone. The Plaza staff knocked as they brought in meals, but he hadn't heard them. Mulder called, "Thank you," to whoever came in the front door.

 

He heard no response, so Mulder assumed he was getting the silent treatment from the kitchen for ordering a cup of coffee. Frohike should investigate the conspiracy between his doctor and the chef.

 

Shirtless, he padded barefooted into the kitchen. He planned to down coffee and toast, and shower before he left to do whatever he was going to do. Beg and plead, probably. His grandmother’s engagement ring remained in his trouser pocket.

 

"Goodness, Fox; forty-five suits you," came a familiar female voice with a cockney accent.

 

He turned to find Phoebe Mulder looking him up and down appreciatively. "Thirty-nine next week," he corrected her. "How did you get in here?"  

 

"I used a key." She held up Will's, looking victorious.

 

She was tall, gazelle-like, with eyes the color of their son's. Phoebe was carefully pretty these days, with too much coiffed hair and artful makeup and expensive clothes. She wore lipstick too dark for so early in the day, and stiletto heels too high. "What do you want, Phoebs?"

 

Never having been there, Phoebe took a tour his apartment like she was the Queen of Sheba. She paused to peer into his bedroom, where the top sheet, pillows, and bedspread remained on the floor along with his T-shirt and tuxedo shirt. "Was she here last night?"

 

Dana’s flute of champagne sat on the nightstand with a few bubbles still clinging to the inside of the glass.

 

"Was she?" his ex-wife's voice repeated. She gestured to the bedroom. "Here?"

 

"What do you want?" he repeated. "Why are you here?"

 

"You don't have to admit it to me. Plenty of people saw you leave the party with her last night. Mrs. Sinclair noticed her leave the hotel later in quite a disarray. I take it things didn't go as you'd hoped?"

 

"Phoebe..." he said warningly.

 

"Or perhaps things did. Are you pissing again? Sport with you pissed is such a treat."

 

"It's not your business," he said tersely.

 

"It is my business if half of Manhattan saw you. What were you thinking? What if William had been here? He is an impressionable child."

 

"If you're so concerned about our son, why are you here instead of home taking care of him?" Mulder shot back, his temper starting to get the better of him. "What are you doing here, Phoebe? Does it make you crazy knowing I love a woman and it isn't you? Try this on for size. If she'll have me, I'm going to marry her, so it doesn't matter what Mrs. Sinclair did or didn't see last night."

 

"Does William know?"

 

He nodded and felt a wave of smug satisfaction. "See yourself out." He started to step around her, headed down the hall to shower.

 

"Dana Scully isn't a widow." She sounded as if she told a secret rather than jabbed a knife. "She's never been married."

 

"What makes you think that?"

 

"Mamie Lewis' husband is a doctor at The Brooklyn Hospital. He said Dana Scully worked there until two years ago, when he got suspicious about her daughter and asked her about her late husband. She couldn't produce a marriage certificate, and they fired her."

 

"Mamie Lewis' husband will chase anything in a dress," he responded, but his stomach flip-flopped. The Army Nurse Corps stopped giving dishonorable discharges to unmarried pregnant women in 1945, and that would have been the difficult thing to hide. One call to Frohike would produce a marriage certificate, a birth certificate, even a soldier's tombstone and wedding photos. Mulder could become Emily's father, if necessary. With enough money, illegitimacy was a relatively simple thing to conceal, especially during wartime - but not if people knew. Not if they talked.

 

If Phoebe knew, Will knew.

 

Mulder looked at the rumpled bed at the end of the hall again. He remembered Dana's toes curling and feet shifting against the sheet as he touched her. Explored her body. Pushed his fingers inside her. Rubbed that tiny knob of flesh until her body convulsed. He remembered her breasts pressing against his chest and her mouth hungry for his. Her gasping, her pained but wondrous expression as he entered her. Her breath hot and fast against his neck. Her muscles tensing, her fingers in his hair. Her hips rocking up against his as she climaxed. Opening her legs wider for him, telling him not to stop. He’d felt like his body blended into hers, his heart beat in conjunction with hers. His pleasure was hers. No question in his mind: if love was fire, he would have suffered third degree burns.

 

"I shouldn't have told you like that," Phoebe said in a softer voice. "Fox, I'm sorry."

 

He put his hand in his trouser pocket, toying with the old ring.

 

"I think it's sad: sad for her, sad for the little girl. She has my sympathies more than you can fathom." She stepped closer and put her cool hand on his forearm, smoothing the dark hair. "But what's done is done. What you do for sport is your business, but you can't possibly marry her. Fox, dearest-"

 

Phoebe moved forward with her hand raised to caress his face. Mulder stepped back. How dare she stand there in her Chanel suit, trying to pass for a lady, and judge Dana Scully. He still doubted Dana's version – or at least, Dana’s recollection - of events, but whatever happened that she had Emily, if Dana said she didn’t do anything wrong, Mulder believed Dana. And he believed she loved him. Beyond that, it was no one else's business.

 

"Watch me," Mulder said coolly. "I have no intention of living my life based on what you or Mrs. Sinclair or Mamie Lewis' idiot husband thinks."

 

"I won't stand for this."

 

He pointed across the living room to the tall front door. "Good-bye, Phoebs. Happy New Year."

 

"I will not have you bedding her with William in the next room," she said angrily. "I will not have my son around her illegitimate child. I'm sure the judge, if we ask him, would agree. You're not the big Yankee baseball hero anymore, dearest. You can't show up in court and dazzle the judge. You're an over-the-hill nobody trying to recapture your youth with a girl half your age."

 

He pointed at the door again. Just once, he wouldn’t let her play him like a piano. "Thank you for coming. It was a lovely performance; I quite enjoyed it. Please exit stage left."

 

Her expression hardened. "If that whore or her bastard is in my son's presence again, I'll go to the papers and the court, and you won't see William until he turns eighteen."

 

Phoebe started to walk away, but Mulder slammed his hand against the wall in front of her so she couldn't, his face hot.

 

"You say one word and I'll take you apart piece by piece for all your pretty, empty-headed friends to see." He felt another wave of satisfaction as her eyes widened. "I'm 'Fox, dearest,' remember? I'm the chump who's paid for your booze and pills and parties and abortions for the last fifteen years. I've more than done right by you. No one else is going to determine my life for me. You say one word against Dana Scully or her daughter, and we'll go back to court. We'll bring in your nineteen-year old boyfriends to testify to what a swell time you were and whether or not Will was in the next room to hear it."

 

"You're bluffing. You won't do that to William." 

 

"You think he doesn't know, Phoebe? You're petrified William might notice I love someone, but you don't care his friends laugh at him because of you?" Mulder's voice remained low, but his face was inches from hers. "If you want to go back to court, we'll go. I can tell the judge I married a bright, lovely young woman who takes wonderful care of her daughter - and of my son - and you can tell him you're still the town pump."

 

Mulder waited to be slapped, but instead she looked at him steadily and smiled a wicked smile. She put her hand low on his bare abdomen and moved to kiss him.

 

"Not interested," he informed her, leaning back.

 

"Liar," she countered.

 

He dropped his arm to let her leave and turned away, disgusted. As he waited, the atmosphere in the room thickened sickeningly as Phoebe tried another tack.    

 

"I know how much you want the best for our son, Fox. The best school, the best university, a year in Europe before he marries a nice girl from a good family. I know how much you sacrificed so he could have that. You gave up your dream not for me, but for him."

 

She ran her nails lightly down his bare back. He shivered involuntarily.

 

"What's the matter? Banging sweet little I-made-a-mistake left something to be desired?" she asked sarcastically. “She didn’t appreciate that big cock?”

 

“Get out,” he responded.

 

“It hurts,” Phoebe said breathily, sounding about fifteen. “It’s too big. Oh God, it hurts. No, don’t stop. Ouch. Oh God. Please - I want you to; it’s just so big.” Her pretty eyes narrowed. “Really, Fox?” she asked flatly. “Did you buy the innocent virgin act?”

 

He didn't answer except to order her to, "Get the hell out."

 

"William idolizes you, Fox. He saves those baseballs you give him. He checks The Times and The Post to see if you're in it. You're what he thinks a man is supposed to be, but you'll disappoint our son the same way you disappoint everyone else." The fingernails grazed his shoulder blade as she spoke, carving swirls of parallel lines. "There are girls you marry and girls you don't. Go ahead: teach him to confuse the two like his father does."

 

After he escorted her out - holding her by the arm and half-walking, half-dragging her as she cursed and threatened - Mulder flopped on the sofa and stared angrily at the ornate plaster ceiling. Fifteen years, and he should still have 'Steinway' printed across his chest.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Melvin Frohike looked perpetually disgruntled, and he'd seemed odd. His hygiene and wardrobe left something to be desired, and he was short. Very short. When Frohike herded his ball players around, he looked like a scruffy little terrier among greyhounds.

 

Both Lou Gehrig and Bill Dickey recommended Melvin Frohike though, which Mulder felt was an adequate endorsement. He wasn't sure why he needed an agent, but he wasn’t sure of many things in 1939. He did know the Yankees were 15-5, he batted .344, and he had a $10,000 season contract. He knew they'd played in Cleveland, Chicago, St. Louis, and Philly in the last two weeks, and he felt damn glad to be off that train.

 

He'd sent a telegram the previous day telling Phoebe to meet him at the train station. She wasn't there, so Mulder assumed the baby was sick again. Will stayed sick thanks to their drafty, rat hole of an apartment and their perpetually empty icebox. But Mulder was about to fix that. His photograph was on the front page of the paper - thanks to Mr. Frohike - and Will and Phoebe could have anything they wanted.

 

Even fifteen years later, Mulder could picture Frohike’s face as Mulder grabbed the tenement landlord by his stained shirt front, slammed the big man against the wall, and demanded in German to know where his family was. Frohike's expression had been 'I wonder if this hotshot is worth the 5% commission.'

 

The Yankees had a party uptown to celebrate their winning streak on the road, and Frohike offered Mulder a ride from Grand Central Terminal to pick up Phoebe and William. Of course your wife is welcome, Mr. Mulder; we'll get a room and you can spend the night. On us. Dinner tonight was also 'on us.' The hotel would provide someone to watch the baby; it's not a problem, Mr. Mulder. Hit a few homeruns for the New York Yankees and everything became 'on us' and 'not a problem, Mr. Mulder.'

 

His apartment door upstairs had a padlock, and that was a big problem. Mulder hadn't talked to his wife in a week, and he hadn't seen his infant son in three. Another problem. And if William and Phoebe were sleeping under a bridge or in the poor house, the landlord would have an even bigger problem.

 

"What's he saying?" Mr. Frohike was unfazed by the yelling, the neighbors gathering to watch, or the dingy, Lower East Side surroundings. Frohike waited while a subway car roared past on the elevated line. "Where's your family? Did he evict them?"

 

Mulder asked again, and the landlord answered the same as the last three times. "She went home," Mulder translated for Frohike. "This is her home!"

 

"She leave you," the German man spat back, developing a basic command of English. "Big baseball man," he added scornfully.

 

Frohike caught Mulder's fist as he drew back. "Nope. Rule number four: don't punch anyone, ever."

 

Mulder knew rule number one was 'don't say anything to the press except what I tell you to say to the press.' Number two was 'don't forget to check yourself in the mirror before people point cameras at you,' and rule three: 'don't be rude to fans.'

 

"How much?" His agent took out his wallet. "How much does the Mulder family owe in back rent?"

 

"Is twenty," the landlord answered.

 

"Is fifteen," Mulder corrected angrily. "I wired her more than enough money to pay you."

 

Without comment, Frohike handed the German man a twenty-dollar bill. The agent steered Mulder outside and into the waiting town car, saying they would get Mulder’s things another day.

 

As the driver pulled away from the curb, Mulder stared out the window as if he might spot Phoebe in the crowd, carrying William. He was so frantic his stomach quaked, and yet he felt utterly helpless. His wife and son could be anywhere, and Mulder didn't know where to begin looking. This was not happening.

 

"Where's home?" Frohike asked, startling Mulder.

 

"My home? My parents live in Boston."

 

"Where would your wife think of as home?" his agent asked patiently. "Where did you and she live before here?"

 

"My flat in Oxford for bit."

 

"Oxford, New York or Oxford, Massachusetts?"

 

"Oxfordshire. Southeast England."

 

Frohike nodded silently. "What were you doing in Oxford?"

 

"I was a student. She worked. Before we were married."

 

Frohike continued to nod. "How long have you been married?"

 

"We got married last summer."

 

There was a barely-noticeable pause. "How old is your son, Mr. Mulder?"

 

"Four. Four months."

 

The nodding continued but the little man's expression changed as if a puzzle piece fitted into place.

 

Mulder leaned forward and rested his forehead on his palms. "Phoebe doesn't know anyone in the States except me. If she got evicted, there's no place for her to go. Especially not with a baby." He thought a minute, and looked up. "Her mother's apartment in London. 110A Piccadilly. If Phoebs got on a ship after I last talked to her, she could be there. If she's not, though - I have no idea. Maybe her mother will know."

 

After one more nod, Frohike leaned forward to speak to the chauffeur.

 

Twenty minutes later, they parked in front of a high-rise building across town. Frohike had an office on the tenth floor, in the corner overlooking the Hudson River. Photos of ballplayers lined the hallway: Lou Gehrig, Bill Dickey, and a half-dozen other Yankees. There were several Washington Senators and a few White Sox and Dodgers. Cy Young, long retired. Babe Ruth. Jesus Christ, Mulder remembered thinking: this strange little man is Babe Ruth's agent.

 

Frohike pointed Mulder toward one of the leather chairs and sat down across from him. Seeing a telephone on the table, Mulder reached for it. Frohike stopped him. "Tell me what you're going to say to her," his agent requested.

 

"I'm going to tell her she can come home," Mulder answered irritably. "We can live someplace with heat and where the windows don't rattle. We can buy milk for the baby and..." He trailed off, covering his face tiredly. "Let me use your phone. How is this your job?"

 

"My job is to look out for my ball players. You'd be amazed at the things that entails, Mr. Mulder."

 

Frohike removed his hand from the receiver, and Mulder took a deep breath as he picked it up. It took a few minutes for the overseas operator to put the call through, but Phoebe picked up on the fourth ring.

 

"Phoebs," Mulder said. "Are you okay? Is Will okay?"

 

"Fox? Where are you, Fox?"

 

"In Manhattan. In my agent's office. Our apartment is padlocked. What happened? Didn't you get the money I wired?"

 

"I didn't know what to do," she said over the crackling line. "I didn't know where you were."

 

"So you took my son and got on a ship for England? If you didn't get the money to pay the rent, how did you pay for the ship?"

 

"I can't live like that, Fox. It's awful, and it's awful for the baby, and I'm not doing it. I can't understand anyone and-"

 

He interrupted her. "I know." He'd heard all this before. "The baseball games went well. The team wants me to keep playing. Baseball is an important sport in the States. We'll get a nice apartment. We'll get someone to help with Will-"

 

"Mum's looking after the baby." He heard her sniff. "She says he hasn't been getting enough to eat, and we should live here."

 

Frohike still sat in front of him, watching Mulder and listening. 

 

"I-I can't come to London, Phoebs. My job is here."

 

His agent scribbled on a notepad. Frohike held it up for Mulder to see.

 

"I'm sending you a first class ticket to come home," Mulder read, and Frohike nodded. "You and Will." She didn't respond, so he reminded her, "You're my wife. For better or for worse, remember? We're a family. You don't take my son and leave the country because you're momentarily unhappy." She didn’t respond, so he said, "Money isn't a problem, Phoebs; the problem is you're on the wrong side of the Atlantic Ocean. You know I love you. You and Will are everything to me. Come home. Things will be better, I promise."

 

It seemed like forever before she said, "I'm staying here. This is my home. I don’t like the States. They’re not what you promised."

 

Mulder scrambled for some solution. “My aunt and grandmother are in Germany,” he said. “Would you-”

 

“I’ve never been to Germany.”

 

Before he married her, Phoebe had never been out of southern England. “Germany is nice. My relatives are nice. They’ll take good care of you and Will until I can come. I’ll wire you money.”

 

“I’m not living with your bloody Jew relatives, Fox. They probably don’t even speak English.”

 

Mr. Frohike wrote again. This time, the tablet read 'Is there someone else?' Mulder shook his head, refusing to ask. He moved his thumb to toy with his heavy wedding band, but remembered he wasn't wearing it.

 

"Baseball season doesn't end until fall," Mulder told her. "If you stay in London, it may be November before I see you and William again."

 

There was another pause, some crackling on the line, and, "All right."

 

"Phoebe-"

 

"Why does it matter where we live? You're never at home, Fox. If you are, all you want to do is sleep. Sleep and complain about what I'm doing wrong. You're the one who wanted a baby, and you're the one who wanted to get married. Everything’s about you and your son. What about what I want?"

 

"What do you want, Phoebe?" he asked, feeling beaten.

 

She didn't answer.

 

Frohike held up the steno pad again but Mulder ignored him. He asked about William, but Phoebe answered in irritable monosyllables. He told her he loved her and said good-bye, not sure what else to say. They were okay, he told himself as he hung up the telephone. His wife and son were three thousand miles away, but they were okay. He and Phoebe would work this out - he just wasn't sure how.

 

On the notepad, Frohike had written 'I want to check the baby's blood type against mine' and a checklist: 'divorce lawyer (US & Eng), private detective (Eng), accountant (Langly), real estate agent, nanny, housekeeper.'

 

Mulder frowned. "You're not a 'glass half full' fellow, are you?"

 

"I'm doing my job," Frohike answered. "Though, given my druthers, I prefer happy endings."

 

"I'll see what I can do," Mulder promised hollowly. He resumed watching the telephone as if it might give him some guidance.

 

Without comment, Frohike went to his liquor cabinet and returned with a bottle of Glenlivit and two glass tumblers. "Rule number six: don't get drunk in public."

 

They sat holding their glasses, sipping the good whisky, and watching the sun set over the Hudson River. They should be at the party at the Waldorf Astoria. There would be press, Frohike had said. Cameras and microphones. Mulder had learned his lines and checked his tie. He needed his pretty wife put on her best dress, hold their son, and smile adoringly. Mulder kept looking around at a tasteful office surreally incongruous with Melvin Frohike and hearing his German landlord's voice echoing inside his head: 'She leave you, big baseball man.'

 

No matter what Mulder did, it was never good enough. He was a day late and a dime short: saving his sister, making his parents proud, making his wife happy, getting home before Will fell asleep. The knack to normal eluded him.

 

He could hit a baseball. At least that was something.

 

"What about rule number five?" Mulder asked as Frohike poured each of them a generous second serving of Scotch whisky. "You skipped one. Are there really rules, or are you putting me on?"

 

"They're 'the don'ts.'" Frohike propped his feet up on the coffee table - wingtip shoes that needed polished and resoled - and looked out at what had to be a $300 a month view. "To be an icon, it's not enough to be good at baseball; you have to remember the don'ts. And you, Fox Mulder, are going to be an icon."

 

"Someone should tell my wife."

 

"It won't make a difference," his agent assured him, and Mulder lapsed into morose silence again.

 

Between them, they finished the bottle of Glenlivit, and Mulder ended up at Frohike's apartment that night, sleeping it off on the sofa. Over breakfast at a downtown deli - coffee, bagels, and a two glasses of orange juice with a packet of Goody's Headache Power stirred into each - he recalled discussing the Chancellor of Germany, Adolph Hitler, who'd been claiming Poland was detaining and executing Germans. Melvin Frohike thought the claims could be a ruse for Germany to invade Poland, and Mulder said time would tell. Hitler promised to build an empire to last a thousand years, but in 1939 all he'd only spewed a lot of anti-Semitic propaganda; that did not make him unique in the world. Mulder remembered being impressed at the breadth of Mr. Frohike's knowledge of all things esoteric - and sometimes paranoid - in addition to his repertoire of off-color jokes.

 

By the time the Yankees left on their next road trip, Mulder had a three-bedroom apartment three blocks from Central Park, close to a library, and near several private schools. He had a maid who came twice a week. In London, Will had a nanny: a French woman named 'Marie' with excellent references who Mulder was impressed with on the telephone and Phoebe didn't to despise. At Mr. Frohike's insistence, Mulder also had a lawyer and an accountant. Mulder still didn't think those things were his agent's business, but his agent disagreed.

 

He recalled being grudgingly grateful - for the guidance and for the company - but thinking Melvin Frohike didn't know what the hell he was talking about when it came to Phoebe.

 

*~*~*~*

 

An empty baseball stadium reminded Mulder of an empty cathedral; he could still hear echoes of the past in the silence. This part of the American dream didn't make the papers: the winter after the glorious season ended. Mulder could think here. He could shut out the sounds from the stands and focus on doing what came naturally.

 

The new pitching machine launched a ball, and Mulder swung hard. At the crossroads between Heaven and home plate, wood met horsehide with a sharp crack, sending the ball sailing over the wall a few seconds later.

 

Maybe Dana was right. They were too far from perfection to begin with.

 

Maybe Mulder tired of fighting the good fight and losing on a technicality. Being a day late and a dime short.

 

Maybe he was scared.

 

Will's voice called to him from the dugout, "That's homer number three-hundred and sixty-two."

 

Mulder remained at the plate. "Three-hundred and seventy-three. You missed a few earlier. What are you doing up here, Will? Where's your mother?"

 

"I don't know. You didn't answer when I rang The Plaza. Mrs. Scully said you weren't at her flat. She sounded upset, but like she didn't want me to know it. I wanted to talk to you. Mother made me give her my key this morning, but she hasn't been back. She said... Dad, Mother said some awful things about Mrs. Scully."

 

Mulder picked up a ball from the bucket. He held the ball to his nose to inhale the familiar, comforting smell. Baseballs smelled like innocence.

 

"They aren't true, are they? I thought-"

 

Mulder threw the ball up, this time hitting a line drive past third base and into the outfield in perfect form. Perfect. Uncanny naturalness, the press called it. He'd done everything perfectly, and the reporters said he made it look easy.

 

He'd like to let the spectators and reporters try it and see if they still thought it was so easy.

 

Rule number five, which Frohike kindly and nimbly sidestepped telling Mulder all those years ago, was 'don't stick your cock in crazy.' Rule number seven was 'don't lie to your agent,' and eight was 'don't forget who you are and the people who mean the most to you.'

 

"I thought if you married Mrs. Scully, and I wasn’t any trouble, I could... Perhaps I could live with you instead of Mother," Will confessed. "I suppose I don't care if it's true or not. Everyone makes mistakes, and I like Mrs. Scully. Do you care about her daughter? You must care and it must be true, or you wouldn't be up here hitting baseballs in the middle of winter."

 

"Do I care?" Mulder talked more to himself than to Will. "It's not that simple, son.

 

"Mother said Mrs. Scully was with you last night," William said as a fact, and Mulder didn't answer.

 

In Mulder’s version of the American dream, two people loving each other shouldn't be so scandalous or impossibly complicated.

 

The Negro groundskeeper carried a bucket of new balls out to the mound and stood waiting in the cold to work the pitching machine. Mulder stared past him, at the blur of the outfield.

 

"Do you want to know if Dana Scully is a nice lady, Will?" Mulder said. "Yes, she is. What does that make me?"

 

He heard Will step over the wall of the dugout and amble toward home plate. "Marry her."

 

"It's not that simple." Mulder still stared past the groundskeeper.

 

William turned the collar of his leather jacket up against the cold. "Why is it not that simple? Don't you love her?"

 

"Do I love her? Do you want to know the big secret, Will?" Mulder lowered the bat and looked out at the empty stadium. "Love - when it's real, is everything it's supposed to be: as wonderful as hitting a homerun and as frightening as a roller coaster at the top of a hill. You can’t choose who you love. It happens, and the real thing, when it comes along: that moment is worth the wait. It's worth risking everything for, but it's not like in the movies, son. Everyone doesn’t fall in love and live happily ever after. Love is a feeling, not a choice. Life requires choices. Whether you’re fifteen or twenty-three or turning forty next week, what you do with love isn’t easy or simple. We have all these rules about how life should be if everyone does the right thing, but love doesn’t care about society’s rules. Love is messy. We’re supposed to do the right thing with the most wonderful, terrifying emotion in the world.” Mulder paused. “I’m not sure I did the right thing, Will, but of course I love Dana Scully. And Emily. And you.”

 

His son had his hands stuffed deep in his pockets. "Did you ever love my mother?"

 

"I did." Mulder nodded, thinking back. "I remember her carrying you and being miserable and thinking how grateful I was to her. I remember you being born, and looking at you while she held you. I love you, so I think a part of me will always love her in some way."

 

"But you don't love her. You love me and she's- She's how you got me."

 

"I never said that, Will. She's your mother."

 

"You don't have to say it; I know. Everyone makes mistakes, Dad."

 

"You are not a mistake," Mulder responded.

 

"I'm not seven-years-old, either," his son reminded him. "I don't expect everything to be sweet and simple." He added, "Frohike says Velveeta passes for cheese if you've never had the real deal. I don’t care about Emily’s father. I don’t care about what Mother said, or what happened last night. If you think Mrs. Scully's the real deal, Dad... For the love of God, swing for the fences."

 

"If you do, and you miss, there's no going back, Will."

 

"I don't recall ever seeing you miss."

 

Mulder took a deep breath. He exhaled, momentarily forming a cloud of white vapor in front of his face. "I'm done," he yelled to the groundskeeper. "Thank you."

 

The gray-haired Negro man waited beside the pitching machine, looking at them.

 

"Thanks," Mulder called again.

 

The groundskeeper stood on the pitcher's mound, holding a baseball under the bleak winter sun and seeming to grow younger and taller. Mulder waved to him and he waved back, smiling the same mysterious smile as Dana.

 

Mulder shivered, though not because of the January cold.

 

"Let's get out of here, Will."

 

Still taller, Mulder slung one arm around his son's shoulders and carried the Louisville Slugger as they walked off the field. He put his hat on Will's head, and his son took it off and smoothed his hair.

 

"How did you know where to find me? How did you get up to the Bronx?"

 

"I rang the diner across the street and ask if there was a black Cadillac parked on the players' lot at Yankee Stadium."

 

"Resourceful young man, aren't you?"

 

"And devilishly handsome," William said.

 

"How did you pay the cab?"

 

"I took the tube." Will seemed proud as they walked through the gate and into the huge parking lot. "It's crazy simple. You buy the tokens, look at the map, and get on the right train. Mrs. Scully showed me."

 

"When?"

 

"One day, our housekeeper was sick. Mother didn’t fetch me after school, so I tried to find you. I rang Mrs. Scully's flat, and she came and showed me how to use the subway in case I ever needed to again. I asked Mrs. Scully not to tell you. I thought you'd be angry with Mother."

 

They stood in front of the car, not looking at each other.

 

"Here, Will." Mulder slide the spare key off his key ring. "This will be your key. Start the car, and you can drive to the edge of the parking lot. Once you’re sixteen, as long as your grades improve, we'll pick out a car for you, but you can practice with me in my car between now and then."

 

Will's face brightened, and he bounded into the driver's seat.

 

Mulder got in the passenger side, saying his prayers. He was fairly sure his son wasn't genetically destined to be a chauffeur.

 

Christ, he had to stop listening to Frohike. This was ridiculous. 

 

"Give it a little gas as you turn the key. Don't flood it. A little gas, Will!" he ordered as the big Cadillac engine roared. "Now, put your foot on the brake pedal. No, you use one foot to drive this car; there's no clutch, remember? Foot off the gas and on the brake. Put it in gear."

 

Mulder exhaled. So far, so good.

 

"Gently touch the gas and the car will move. If you feel like you're going too fast, put your foot gently back on the brake. Try not to forget to steer, but there's nothing for you to hit."

 

William floored the gas, squealing the tires as though they were drag racing, panicked, slammed on the brake, and sent Mulder face-first into the dashboard.

 

"Ah, shit, William Adam!" Mulder rubbed his forehead.

 

"Sorry," Will said meekly. "It was an accident."

 

"S'okay. Try again. Easy this time."

 

"No, I don't think I'm good at driving."

 

"You can do it, son. Go on," he urged. "You'll do fine. Go slowly. Take your time. We have all the time in the world."

 

After a few more uneven starts, Will got the feel of things, regained his confidence, and made a victory lap before they reached the edge of the empty parking lot and came to a gentle stop.

 

"Very nice," Mulder said in approval.

 

"Where to, Daddy-O?"

 

Noticing a woman's lipstick and Mr. Potato Head's plastic lips had rolled from underneath the passenger seat during one of Will's braking fits, Mulder replied, "Brooklyn. I should have a nurse look at my forehead. I'll drive, though. You help me think of something to say to Dana."

 

“Say, ‘Mrs. Scully, I’m an old-fashioned, hypocritical fool with horrid taste in books, music, and clothes,’” William suggested, “but I’m quite wealthy, dolls fall all over me, and I have my own baseball card. Overlook my many quirks and promise you’ll marry me. Also, fix your future, devilishly handsome stepson some lunch.’”

 

“I can’t say that, Will. Not with you and Emily there. Any sane woman would throw me to the floor and rip my clothes off. I’m going with-” Mulder gestured to his head.

 

After walking around the car to get in on the other side, and - of course - slamming the passenger door, Will scrutinized his father's forehead as Mulder shifted the transmission into gear. "The bruise isn't bad. She’ll never buy that. I suggest flowers and groveling.”

 

"I’ll tell her we came to return her lipstick and-" Mulder picked up the plastic lips from the floor. "-whatever you'd call this." He hesitated. “Will, I can’t promise Dana will say ‘yes,’ no matter what I say or do. This woman couldn’t care less about money or baseball cards, and last night... Flowers and groveling might be the best approach.” He pulled onto the empty street, leaving the stadium behind them. "If we get as far as the Brooklyn Bridge without figuring out something, I'll pull over. You hit me with a baseball bat. That worked last time."

 

“Brilliant. I could drive you to Mrs. Scully’s apartment as you bleed,” Will volunteered.

 

*~*~*~*

 

End: A Moment in the Sun, part I

 

Begin: A Moment in the Sun, Part II

 

*~*~*~*

 

According to Frohike, Mulder did not lie; he omitted a portion of the truth. In Frohike's skilled hands, a bar brawl became a "gentleman's disagreement," a drunken night in jail was "an unfortunate situation with the authorities," and a player who retired or got himself fired from the ball club "looked forward to spending time with his family." Melvin Frohike had an admirable liquidity of conscience with press releases, children's welfare, and pretty women.

 

Mulder pushed the intercom button, had Will speak, and followed his son into the apartment building. A calico tomcat slipped in along with them like a cold shadow, but once inside mewed and rubbed his body against Mulder's leg.

 

By the time they reached the third landing, Dana leaned over the railing of the top floor. "William?" she called down worriedly. "Will, what's wrong? Are you all right? Where's your father? Is Mulder all right?"

 

William trudged up the steps. He pointed back over his shoulder. "I was put up to this. I am an impressionable child. I should not be party to deception unless food or love is involved," Will said as he reached the top. "Ideally, I fancy both."

 

Dana stared past him and at Mulder, who stopped on the top step in front of her with the scruffy cat in his arms and his hat in his hand. She wore loose slacks and a blue sweater and blouse under a white apron. Wool socks covered her feet. She held a potato peeler.

 

"Hello," Mulder said for lack of anything better. "Hi, Dana."

 

"Hello," she exhaled.

 

"Your cat wanted in, and your elevator is still broken." A warm numbness spread through Mulder’s belly. "I had to carry him up."

 

"He- You- Good thing you were in the neighborhood."

 

"We weren't even in the neighboring borough," William interjected from the doorway of her apartment.

 

The door was open, the television set was on, and something cooking on the stove smelled wonderful. The cat jumped down, landing lightly on his feet and inviting himself into the apartment. William followed. Mulder heard Emily's high-pitched voice greeting her cat and Will.

 

Dana wiped her hands on her apron and seemed not to know what else to do with them. Mulder stood at eye level with her. Her eyes were glistening and beautiful. The force from her pulled at him like the tide.

 

"He wants a grilled cheese sandwich. With real cheese."

 

"Okay. I can make that." She nodded nervously. "I have vegetable soup, too. You have a bump on your head. Were you and Will playing baseball?"

 

"Driving lesson." Mulder chucked anxiously. "Marry me," he said, before he lost his nerve. “Whatever happened, I don’t care. I love you. Marry me.”

 

"Yes, okay. All right. Yes," she answered quickly.

 

He nodded back at her. "Okay."

 

"Yes," she repeated.

 

"Yes," Mulder echoed.

 

They looked at each other breathlessly.

 

He exhaled, laughed, cupped her face with his hand, and kissed her. Mulder closed his eyes, and time stretched out lazily. Like the previous night, he let the current sweep him out to sea with her, far from the rest of the world for a moment.

 

"I love you I love you don't you ever leave me again," he whispered, putting his arms around her and pulling her close.

 

"I won't," she promised. "Don't you leave me, Mulder."

 

"I won't." Those words held more commitment than the most elaborate of wedding vows.

 

She touched his cheeks with her fingertips, and smiled as she ran a finger across the small scar and the new bruise on his forehead. "I love you," she whispered.

 

He stepped up to the landing, put his arms around her hips, and lifted her gently, turning her in a slow circle before setting her down and holding her close.

 

Inside the apartment, Emily coughed, and the tide of the outside world turned to flow over them. Time returned to its normal speed, and he let go of her, still feeling giddy.

 

"I have soup," Dana said again, seeming dazed herself. She took him by the hand. "Come inside."

 

In the living room of Dana's apartment, Emily lay on the sofa under a blanket, dully watching Howdy Doody on the television. The calico cat had found a spot at her feet, and her stuffed Kitty was against her chest.

 

Emily sat up to greet Mulder, looking pale, as he hung his coat and hat on the rack near the door.

 

"Are you still sick?" he asked, squatting down.

 

She nodded unhappily.

 

Mulder gave her a kiss on her forehead, and she curled up again. Making himself at home, William claimed the other end of the sofa and part of the blanket. The cat surveyed the situation, moved to Will's lap, and went to sleep.

 

His son gave him the subtlest of questioning looks. Mulder nodded, and William gave Dana a warm smile.

 

"What's wrong with Emily now?" Mulder followed Dana into the kitchen. One peeled and three unpeeled potatoes lay in the sink, awaiting the stockpot.

 

"She can’t seem to shake this bug. I'll call the doctor tomorrow."

 

Dana lifted the lid of a stockpot and gave the vegetable soup a stir before starting Will's grilled cheese sandwich. The kitchen radio played jazz softly. Stuck to the front of the refrigerator with a magnet was a note on Bergdorf Goodman stationery in Mulder’s handwriting. 'Thank you for the cookies. Love, Mulder.'

 

Mulder leaned against the counter and watched her. He wanted to sit down to dinner with her each night, and he wanted to wake up next to her each morning. He wanted to carry groceries in from the car for her and fight about the checkbook and have children and grandchildren with her. He wanted to sit on the front porch with her when they grew old, holding hands and watching the sun set at the end of the world. After he died, when she was impossibly old, Mulder wanted her to think of him and smile. If he had a destiny, it wasn't to play baseball. Or to solve crimes for the FBI. It was to love her. He felt certain of it. He was as tied to her as the buttons on her blouse. He'd known her for 62 days, made love to her once, and loved her for at least five lifetimes.

 

"Ani l'Dodi, v'Dodi li," he said.

 

Dana dropped the sandwich into a frying pan and turned toward him curiously.

 

"It's Hebrew. Song of Songs. Ani l'Dodi, v'Dodi li," he repeated.

 

"You speak Hebrew? Mulder, how many languages do you speak?"

 

"A few," he answered, and translated, "I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine.”

 

She smiled.

 

As Duke Ellington and his orchestra began to play “In a Sentimental Mood,” Mulder said, “Dance with me."

 

With slow, elegant jazz playing in the background, he took her in his arms. Mulder guided her in small circles in the triangle between the stove, the icebox, and the kitchen table. If the Russians bombed them tomorrow, or he died in his sleep tonight, he wouldn't regret one second of his life leading led up to this moment. The pale yellow winter sunlight streamed in through the kitchen window, and the smell of frying bread rose from the stove. Dana's wool socks scuffed softly against the floor, and the fifty-piece orchestra played through the radio's tinny speaker.

 

"Excuse me," William's voice interrupted. "I am young and impressionable and peckish."

 

"One more minute, Will," Mulder said without raising his cheek from the top of Dana's head.

 

"Does she know you don't like any music by white people? She's committing to fifty years of hearing scratchy old records they sell in the back of the store?" his son asked. "Miss Scully?"

 

"One minute," Mulder repeated.

 

"Did Dad tell you that daft story about Abraham Lincoln's ghostly funeral train leaving New York every April? I don't care if you're getting married; don't let you talk him into staking out the station, Miss Scully. It only encourages him."

 

Still holding her, Mulder raised his hand and held up his index finger at Will.

 

One more minute.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder put Dana’s newly-installed telephone to his ear as she returned to the kitchen. "You are where?" he asked Frohike over the long distance line.

 

"Vegas," Dana called over her shoulder.

 

"Vegas," Frohike's voice repeated, as though it was the most logical thing in the world. "I hoped I'd find you here. How's it going with the tasty little redhead?"

 

Mulder shook his head. The last couple hours moved much too fast for him. "You're where?"

 

"Las Vegas, Nevada. Tell me this: do I get to be best man?"

 

"Or a bridesmaid?" Mulder heard Richard Langly's voice chime in.

 

Mulder shook his head again. "Why did you take my accountant to Las Vegas with you?"

 

"I didn't. He was here. I bumped into him at the hotel bar."

 

"Why was Mr. Langly in Vegas?"

 

After some indecipherable whispering, Frohike said, "He'd rather not say over a telephone line."

 

"Am I paying for this? Will! William!" His son's head peeked out from the kitchen. "You've had lunch. Stop eating Dana out of house and home, and get out from under her feet. She's not a short-order cook, and you're not starving."

 

Will's head disappeared into the kitchen again. Phoebe hadn't turned on an oven in more than a decade, so Will was excited at the prospect of having a stepmother who cooked. Now William requested a pineapple upside-down cake, and Dana explained the 'upside-down' secret as she made it.

 

"Frohike, am I paying for this?" Mulder asked again.    

 

"Well, not the shows or drinks." Frohike cleared his throat. 

 

Mulder heard crackles and thumps as Langly grabbed the receiver. "We're gonna see Sinatra!"

 

Dear God, he trusted these men with his money and secrets.

 

"Mulder- damn it, Langly, stop,” Frohike insisted. “Mulder, whatever this is you asked me to check out, it's big. Get out here and tell me how much information you want to pay for, because it seems to be endless and I'm not sure what you want to know."

 

"Define 'big'?" he asked, and added softly, "Big as in you can tell me what happened to Dana or Samantha? Or why someone has been keeping tabs on my life?"

 

"Close tabs, Mulder. Remember we are on a party line, but tell me if these names are what I think they are." Frohike read a list of about a dozen women's names beginning with Phoebe Victoria Green and ending with Dana Katherine Scully. Mulder had to think to remember a few nights, both in the States last year and in Europe during World War II. "Tell me I'm wrong,” Frohike said. “Tell me these are random women's names."

 

"No, I think you're right." Mulder turned his back to Dana and Will in the kitchen. An ugly rubber ball bounced around inside his stomach as he watched Emily doze on the couch. He felt filthy. He and Dana had been together barely fourteen hours ago. In his bed, in his apartment. Alone.

 

"Marita Isabella Covarrubias? Rita Covarrubias, the secretary at Cadillac?" Frohike demanded. "I asked you about her, and you told me 'no,' you liar. Rule number seven: Don't lie to your agent. Diana Grace Fowley - who is she? I know her name, too."

 

"Read them again, Frohike," Mulder requested.

 

His agent stumbled again over the French and German names and read the rest slowly. A couple of the last names were unfamiliar, and sometimes the first name Mulder recalled must have been a nickname, but he could match a woman on the list with every sexual encounter in his memory.

 

"It's what you think it is, and there's no one missing. No one, Frohike. My God. How would anyone in the government know?"

 

"More importantly, why would anyone in the government care, Mulder?"

 

*~*~*~*

 

Legend said God finished the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers and, pleased with his handiwork, decided to make one last, master river through the Nevada desert. Late in the afternoon, God formed eight smaller rivers, each ending in a lake, for the great Nevada River to flow into. But dusk fell, so God covered the tributary rivers with sand for safekeeping overnight, planning to create the great Nevada River the next day. In the morning though, God became preoccupied with other things and forgot about his master river. Only the eight lakes remained, their sources hidden below the desert and their water sinking mysteriously away. After epochs, even the lakes sank away, leaving the dry lake beds - barren expanses of cracked earth and salt - which the U.S. government used to test the nuclear bombs.

 

In truth, the eight tributary rivers remained buried beneath the miles of desert sand, and the mighty Nevada River - it never existed at all.

 

Mulder’s suite was atop the new Sands Hotel, with modern white furniture, a broad expanse of teal blue carpet, mirrors everywhere, and huge windows and a balcony overlooking the frenetic lights of the Las Vegas strip. Earlier, a mushroom cloud lingered in the distance. The maids filled the refrigerator, stocked the bar, and left vases of roses throughout the penthouse. A limousine met Mulder and Dana at the airport, and the hotel manager greeted them and showed them to their rooms. The penthouse was complementary, of course, Mr. Mulder, as was the champagne. The chef will send dinner right up, but please bring your lovely lady friend downstairs to see the show tonight.

 

At Langly's suggestion, Mulder owned a sizable amount of stock in the place. Mulder didn't gamble, he didn't drink anymore, and he couldn't care less about the Rat Pack, but the hotel made a nice profit. If he wanted to dazzle Dana, this trip should have done it. They passed Yul Brynner and Elizabeth Taylor in the casino.

 

Dana wasn't dazzled. She worried about Emily, and as uncomfortable with the glitz and hollow glamour as Mulder. They would have both been happier in her apartment watching television.

 

Some honeymoon.

 

The penthouse looked untouched since he'd left it. Mulder’s lovely lady friend slept curled in ball on top of the covers, alone, wearing pajamas and clutching the phone to her chest. The tentative plan to get married this evening had been deterred by the absence of a groom: namely Mulder.

 

Some honeymoon.

 

Mulder pushed his dirty, sweaty clothes into a pile under the sink and turned on the shower. He lingered under the water, washing off what seemed pounds of grime while trying to think of some way to explain himself to Dana. Hanging on the back of the bathroom door, along with the plush robes, he saw a slinky ivory nightgown. Exactly the type of nightgown a new bride wore to bed.

 

Some honeymoon.

 

Mulder sat down on the bed, and Dana’s eyes opened. She sighed, sat up, and kissed the tip of his nose. "Oh, thank God. I was so worried." 

 

"I am so sorry, Dana-"

 

"Where did you disappear to?" She set the telephone on the nightstand and crawled under the covers. "Are you okay? What happened?"

 

He remained seated on the edge of the mattress. "I'm okay. Frohike wanted to show me something, and I thought it would take an hour or so. I thought it was closer, and I lost track of time."

 

Dana took his hand. "What did he want to show you?"

 

Windows lined one wall of the bedroom and a wall of mirrors another. Mulder watched his dim reflection as he lay down. He still wore the terrycloth robe over his shorts. "A base. There's a military base out there, Dana. In the middle of the desert. You can't see it from the road, but it's there."

 

"I know it's there, Mulder," she assured him evenly. "Is that why you wanted to come out here? Not on business or to get married, but so you could check my story?"

 

"I'm not checking your story. I wanted to know the truth."

 

"I told you the truth," she said, growing cooler by the minute.

 

He chewed at his lower lip. "It's not just you, Dana. This involves my sister. It involves me."

 

Meek Dana was not, and their wedding vows – if they ever managed to take them – should probably include him obeying her wishes rather than the other way around. Most of the time, he didn’t mind. People could joke about who wore the pants at their house, but Dana had a good head on her shoulders, he had a high tolerance for beautiful, bossy women, and at the end of the day, Mulder paid the bills. Still, Mulder standing her up for her own wedding... He hunched his shoulders, anticipating wrath.

 

Instead, after a long silence, Dana shook her head warily. "Don't do this."

 

"I didn’t lie to you. It's my business to keep you safe. You and Emily. I want to know what they're doing out there." 

 

She ran her warm fingers over his cheek and brought her face close to his. "No, you don't." She swallowed and said, "Those men will kill you and not think twice."

 

"All I did was climb a hill and look at their base through binoculars. I'm not breaking any law."

 

"Those men are above the law. They will kill you. They will kill me. They will kill our children, our families, our friends, and anyone who gets in their way." Mulder heard certainty in her voice. "If you keep asking questions, it doesn't matter who you are. They will get to you. They will destroy you. Don't do this, Mulder. This isn't some ghost story or folk legend. It's the real deal. Don't get yourself killed because of me."

 

He opened his mouth to argue but closed it again.

 

"I shouldn't have told you," she said regretfully. She rolled away from him and toward the windows. He thought for a moment she might get up and leave. She didn't though.

 

He looked at the back of her head, and past her, at the gaudy teal curtains and the bright lights of The Strip outside. Like the night at The Plaza a few days ago, the rest of the world was innocently attending a party they hadn't been invited to.

 

"I shouldn't have told you," she repeated to the windows.

 

"I'm glad you told me." He put his hand on the small of her waist. Their penthouse had one big bed - all white and teal, of course - but the living room had sofas. "I wanted to see it. We couldn't get near the base though, let alone inside it."

 

"Don't go back."

 

"I won't."

 

"I want to go home," she said, still facing away.

 

"First thing tomorrow morning. This was a bad idea." He hesitated a moment. "We can get married in New York. Next Saturday, so Will can come and Byers will be back from Aspen."

 

"Okay," she agreed quietly. She rolled to face him.

 

Mulder put his arms around her and pulled her close. "I'm sorry." He pushed the neck of her pajamas aside and kissed a path down her neck and shoulder. "I didn't mean to worry you. I didn't mean to go off and leave you. You're safe. I'm safe," he told her between kisses. "No one is going to hurt anyone."

 

After a few minutes, one of her hands slid inside his robe to rest against his bare chest.

 

He lay with her in the darkness with his heart beating against her palm. Together, they were an island in the center of the huge bed, in the center of the penthouse, in the center of the empty desert. In German, they were wo sich Hase und Fuchs gute Nacht sagen - where the hare and the fox say goodnight: in the middle of nowhere. Except the desert wasn't empty. Two hours outside the city lights, guarded by machine guns and razor wire, was a military base not on any map.

 

Mulder found himself wondering if someone watched from the other side of the mirrors. Listened on the private telephone line. He wanted to buy a car and get in it with her and drive as far and as fast as he could tonight, leaving Las Vegas behind. He wanted to get out his old service rifle and make sure his aim remained true. "First thing in the morning," he repeated, "we get on a plane and go home. And we never come back."

 

"Okay."

 

"Speaking of home - Is there a school you have in mind for Emily?" His voice seemed loud in the stillness. The lights of The Strip were glaring and frenzied, but soundless. "If you want her at Packer with Will, I’ll buy one of those big brownstones in Brooklyn Heights. Find one near the park, with a yard. Emily would be in first grade when Will’s a senior. If I'm lucky, he'll graduate before Em gets to junior high."

 

"Packer costs as much as I make in a year, Mulder."

 

He raised one hand, gesturing at the gaudy room. "I'm thinking of selling some stock."

 

"You're serious?"

 

"Are you misunderstanding the 'marry me' plan? I spent fifteen years of my life at a baseball stadium, in a foxhole, or on the road. I want to take the next forty or fifty years and enjoy staying at home with you. The Plaza is a hotel, not a home. Homes have dogs, yards."

 

"An herb garden," she said. "Window boxes."

 

"I'll tell the real estate agent." He shifted, draping his knee between hers. "When are you giving notice at the hospital?"

 

After a barely perceptible pause, she said, "I'd miss the hospital. Maybe I could work part-time." Another pause. “While Emily is at school, and while you’re away doing whatever it is you do all day.”

 

Mulder raised his head, puzzled. “Why on Earth would you need to work at all?” In the interest of not sounding like a dinosaur, he suggested, "Volunteer. I'm sure there are committees." He toyed with the little gold cross on her necklace. "I have a full-time job for you: William wants to live with us."

 

“Will his mother agree?”

 

Mulder worried his tongue against his teeth. “Once the dust settles... If I make it worth her while? Yes.”

 

Her voice sounded cool again as she asked, “If you pay her off, you mean?”

 

The pillow rustled as he nodded. “Or we battle it out in court with Will in the middle of the fight. He’s asked for years, but now I’d be married. Done with baseball. You’d be home, and you take good care of Emily-” Mulder stopped speaking before he veered into even less romantic territory. “That’s not why I’m marrying you,” he felt compelled to add. Mulder’s pillow rustled again, seeming like cellophane rattling in the quietness. “There’s a boarding school in Millbrook. A good one, Dana. He’d only be home-”

 

“Write your ex-wife a check,” Dana said firmly. Her body shifted against him. “Write the check and buy a house in Brooklyn Heights and enroll both kids in Packer. I’ll give notice at the hospital, and I’ll show you how to ride the subway train and save green stamps.”

 

“I don’t think it will come to that.” He kissed her forehead, then her lips. “I love you,” he repeated. “That's a bedroom for you and me, one for Emily, and one for Will. Near Packer, with a yard, a dog, an herb garden, and window boxes." Mulder slid his hand beneath the fabric of her pajama top, over the curve of her waist, across the flat expanse of her stomach, and up to her breast. He felt the life in her, and the quiet strength. "Do we need any more bedrooms?" he asked, pressing his luck as he unfastened the highest button of her pajama top.

 

"Maybe a few extra," she answered quietly.

 

He unfastened the second button. "I'd like that. I would."

 

"I would, too." 

 

The third button opened, revealing small, lovely breasts. "The other night," he asked softly. "Last week - was that nice? For you? I didn't know- you didn't tell me... I should have done things different. Slower. It hurts at first, doesn’t it?"

 

"It was nice," she insisted.

 

He stopped unbuttoning and looked at her steadily. Behind her head, the lights on The Strip continued their frantic, silent dance.

 

“Mulder, I’ve had a baby. There is no hymen. I’m an adult woman.”

 

He thought he knew, but in case, he asked, “Which part’s the hymen?”

 

“The maidenhead,” she said, and he did know that term. “What tears and bleeds. You’ve never been with...”

 

Mulder shook his head.

 

There hadn’t been blood on the sheets. He’d checked. Last week, in the last hours before dawn, as he folded together Dana’s bizarre story with the events he’d personally, intimately witnessed, an awful realization had settled over Mulder. Dana Scully didn’t do anything half-way. He’d seen her bake a cake, suture a wound, and sew an ear back on Emily’s stuffed Kitty: all expertly. Dana had been to bed with Mulder willingly and passionately, but not expertly. With his stomach quaking, Mulder had checked every square inch of fabric on his bed at The Plaza, praying he wouldn’t find blood.

 

His mind had drifted a thousand miles from their Las Vegas hotel room when Dana’s voice said, “I’m sorry.” He looked at her. She looked away. “You’re older than I am. You’re more experienced-”

 

“Experienced?” he interrupted. “Experienced at what? Aside from my ex-wife, until you, I’d never been with a woman I wasn’t three sheets to the wind. What I’m experienced at isn’t love,” he confessed. “The ‘marry me’ plan, Dana. Once the kids are asleep and the dog’s been out, I want to make you happy. Very, very happy. And I want to do that for about the next fifty years. I’ll send for one of those illustrated manuals through the mail if I have to, but you have to tell me the truth. We can’t build a life together on lies.”

 

After a moment’s hesitation, she admitted, “At first. Yes, it hurt at first, but either it stopped hurting or I stopped caring. I don’t remember. After, though... I ached.”

 

“I know,” he said before he thought. He trailed his fingertip down the slope of her breast. Her pajama top remained on by a single little white button at her waist. “I’m sorry.”

 

“Did I ask you to make love to me?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“And did you, sober as a judge and against your better judgment, do as I asked?”

 

“Dana, this feels uncomfortably like a divorce hearing.”

 

“Did you undress me, take me to your bed? Kiss me, touch me, and make love to me until I’m pretty sure the Earth moved and angels sang?”

 

“God, I hope ‘yes’ is the correct answer,” he responded.

 

Outside, lights danced and gleaming cars rushed passed. The desert stretched out beyond the city, a black expanse with secret bases and watching eyes. Inside the penthouse, Mulder heard Dana’s breathing and felt the warmth of her skin.

 

In a low voice, she asked, “Mulder, did I once tell you to stop?”

 

“No.” After some consideration, he said, “I believed you requested I not stop. Emphatically and repeatedly.”

 

“Then don’t be sorry.” She shifted closer to him. “You know, big guy: I want to make you happy, too. Put the kids to bed and let the dog out one last time, and make you very, very happy. For about the next fifty years.”

 

He undid the final button on her pajama top. “I’ll let you,” he said, and put his mouth to her breast.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder felt the fear before he woke. His heart pounded. He sat up, ready to fight. A few seconds passed while Mulder figured out who thrashed on the other side of the bed. Where he was. What had happened to his shorts. His reflection watched him from a long wall of mirrors, and the neon lights outside the penthouse windows still blinked and flashed. The lights of the Vegas Strip reflected in the mirrors as well. The whole room reminded him of a funhouse.

 

"Nightmare, Dana," he called to her. "Wake up. You're having a nightmare."

 

Dana continued to struggle with some invisible monster. Naked, Mulder scooted across the big bed toward her. Another wave of terror passed from her to him. Even though he knew Dana dreamed, Mulder still longed for a weapon in his hand. The threat felt real.

 

“Dana-”

 

"Leave me alone! Don't touch me! Emily?" She cried out, "Don't take her!"

 

"I won't touch you. I'm not touching you. It’s Mulder. Fox Mulder. Emily is in New York with Mrs. Osborne. She's safe. You're safe. We're in Las Vegas and you're having a bad dream.”

 

Dana opened her eyes. Her breath came in gasps. He wasn’t certain she truly saw him.

 

“You’re safe,” he repeated. Mulder started to stroke her face but pulled his hand back. "My God. What were you dreaming about?"

 

Dana shook her head, still seeming disoriented. She pushed herself up on her hands and looked around. The sheet covered her hips, but the lights outside danced blue and green and white against her bare breasts. Her hair was tousled, and looked snarled in the back. "I don't remember. Lights, men, tests."

 

"You’re in Las Vegas.” In case she didn’t remember why he was naked in her bed, he added, “We’re getting married. Tests like math tests?"

 

"Medical tests." She wiped her eyes with her hand. "Awful tests. A needle going into my belly. A drill like a dentist would use."

 

Mulder clinched his stomach muscles in sympathy. He’d been so gentle earlier, and Dana was a quick study, but any Freudian worth his salt knew what would trigger a dream like that. Mulder pulled a blanket over them both and left a large no-man's land in the middle of the bed. He lay down again and found her staring at him.

 

“Dana, I tried- I thought...” Shit. For a guy with most of a degree in psychology from Oxford and a love life interesting enough for the US government to spy on, Mulder had no idea how to fix this. He would need one of those mail-order illustrated marriage manuals. “We’re getting married. I’m not going to hurt you again, and I’m not going to let anyone else hurt you again, ever.”

 

She moved closer. Her hand reached out, and her fingers ran delicately over the angles of his face. "I love you. You are-" Her voice hesitated. "You are precious to me. I have a beautiful little girl who adores you and who you adore; that's all the matters. No more trips to the desert, no more asking questions, please. All you're going to do is get hurt. Promise me," she insisted. "Leave that base alone. Don't go out there anymore. Promise me."

 

Taken aback, he insisted, “Someone did something to you, Dana-”

 

“Promise me.”

 

"I promise," he agreed quietly, as the neon lights flashed outside.

 

Mulder put his arms around her. Her head fit beneath his chin. He felt her relax. Not the tension of her body, but inside her mind. The frantic lights continued outside, but the fear inside her subsided.

 

“I love you,” he told her.

 

Dana kissed his neck. Her cool fingertips trailed down his arm. Down his backside. To his groin, cupping, exploring. Without speaking, he put his hand over hers, showing her what to do as he became erect.

 

As she touched him, he kissed her forehead, her earlobe. Caressed her breasts. Took his turn at touching her. As her breathing became ragged, she rolled to her back, inviting him to love her again. Slowly, gently. One last time before they boarded a plane and returned to the real world.

 

Mulder hadn’t lied to Dana; he omitted a portion of the truth as a means to an end. If Mulder got his version of the American dream, he wanted to know what the government's version was, as well. Dana, Emily, Will. A family, a yard, and a few more kids to run around the yard - he couldn't protect his family unless he knew what he protected them from. He'd been a good soldier, and 'know your enemy' was the first rule. Mulder would never go near the desert base again, but the truth was out there - either on the barren lake bed or buried secretly beneath miles and miles of sand.

 

*~*~*~*

 

For the first time, Mulder got a parking space within fifty feet of Dana’s front door. Pleased with himself, Mulder closed the car door and crouched down, his arms wide, to pick up Emily as she ran across the street to hug him. The little girl wore denim overalls and a sweater, but no coat, hat, or mittens.

 

He swung Em around and set her down. "Where's Mommy?" Finding Emily outside without a coat or supervision surprised Mulder. Dana didn’t let her daughter run loose, and Em was so sick two days ago they had to postpone getting married yet again. The nocturnal practicing at being married, however, continued until they verged on waking neighbors and he couldn’t imagine how Dana sat without wincing. "Is she busy packing? Did you sneak out, little one?"

 

Emily knew how to work the buzzer to let people into the building -sometimes to her mother's chagrin. Dana had told her not to push the button anymore, so perhaps Emily spotted him through the window and, applying four-year-old logic, come downstairs to let him in herself.

 

Mulder pushed the intercom button to Dana's apartment but got no response.

 

He pressed it again.

 

"Mommy had to go," Emily informed him. She stood on tiptoe to press the buzzer for Mrs. Osborne to let them into the building, instead.

 

“Okay.” Perhaps Mrs. Osborne was supposed to be watching Em, but got caught up in one of her television ‘stories.’ Again, that seemed odd. If Emily was outside, Mrs. Osborne sat in a chair near her window, listening to the radio but watching Dana’s daughter.

 

"Where did Mommy go?” he asked. “I think I found a house for us, and I want her to look at it before I sign the papers."

 

Emily shrugged, so he followed her inside and up the squeaky steps. Mrs. Osborne didn’t come to her apartment door. On the top floor, Dana's door stood ajar, and half-packed boxes sat scattered around the apartment.  

 

Mulder put his hands on his hips. "Em, where is your mommy? Where did she have to go?" 

 

Whatever Dana needed, she could have waited thirty minutes and he could have driven her. It seemed illogical she left her daughter with a sitter if Mulder would be back any minute.

 

He looked around Dana's apartment, trying to glean some clue. Wherever Dana went, she didn’t take her purse or winter coat. He wondered if Emily fibbed or teased him. If someone would pop out and yell “surprise.” A January version of April Fools. It wasn't a big apartment, though, and Dana wasn't there.

 

"Where is Mommy?" he asked again. “Is she in the basement, doing the washing? Did she run to the little store down the block to get sugar or eggs or something?”

 

"She had to go," Emily repeated. The little girl wiped her nose on her sweater sleeve and sniffed.

 

Mulder’s stomach dropped like it did if a plane hit turbulence. Dana wasn’t in the basement or up the street. He felt the emptiness.

 

His heart beat faster.

 

"Go where? To get more boxes?" Mulder asked, but he knew that wasn't the answer.

 

Emily sniffed again. "She had to go with the men."   

 

*~*~*~*

 

Eight o'clock arrived with no sign of Dana. Mulder left a note and took Emily back to The Plaza with him. By ten, Mulder carried the phone as he paced so he didn't have to stop pacing to check it still worked. For the two and a half months he'd known her, Dana Scully's life consisted of her daughter, home, work, him, and lately, trying to civilize Will. She went to the market, the park, and sometimes the library. She didn’t spend afternoons casually shopping, or attend ladies' teas or bridge clubs. The woman didn't even have her hair done, for Christ's sake.

 

The police searched her apartment building, the neighboring buildings, even the storm drains and trash. None of the old ladies in her building saw or heard anything unusual. If pressed, they told the police Mulder was there last night and again early this morning, but they'd seen no one else. Without fail, each of her neighbors, after she admitted seeing Mulder enter or leave Dana's apartment after dark, added earnestly, “But they're getting married.”

 

“You should see the rock on the girl's finger,” the Yiddish widow who lived across the hall had rasped. She took a drag from her cigarette and assured the police officer, "Forty years ago, I'da let that handsome baseball fella shtup in, too."

 

Dana's wallet and keys were in her purse, which hung over a kitchen chair. Her clothes were folded in the dresser. She'd washed his teacup and put it on the dish rack; her coffee cup sat on the counter, the contents cold. The indention of Mulder’s head remained on the bed pillow beside hers. Dana, normally a neat housekeeper, had elected not to change the rumpled sheets. The police detective didn't miss that.

 

Mulder went over every detail in his mind, trying to find something to help the police, who did him a 'special favor' by searching for Dana so quickly. A 'special favor' after Mulder called the mayor at home.  The police detective asked if Mulder was missing any cash or jewelry. In other words, had his girlfriend stolen whatever she could lay her hands on, abandoned her daughter, and taken off? Even if Dana had a reason to run away - which she didn’t - she never would have left Emily.

 

The detective asked if Mulder paid Dana's rent and didn't seem to believe he didn't. Mulder knew what it looked like, but that wasn't the case. Damn it, if it was a love nest, he'd pay for something nicer, with an elevator.

 

Mulder and Dana were getting married on Friday afternoon, come hell or high water. Mulder had called the judge. Byers could be there. Will could leave school early, and Emily could be sick in the judge's chambers as easily as she could be sick at home.

 

They were getting married.

 

Emily insisted she saw 'men' 'Mommy had to go with.' The detective talked with her, but Emily offered as much information as any other four-year old. Grandma's name was 'Grammy' and Grammy lived 'in a house.' Mulder knew Dana kept in touch with her mother and sister, but he had no idea how to contact them or, given what they probably thought of Dana, if they wanted contacted at all.

 

The policeman asked if Mulder was Emily's father. Mulder admitted he wasn't. The detective frowned and wrote that on his little pad of paper.

 

A search of Dana's apartment turned up a carefully balanced bankbook, Emily's birth certificate with a strange man's name listed as the father – Mulder guessed she had to name someone - and Dana's diploma from nursing school. Beyond that and some random pieces of mail, Mulder found nothing. He left Dana and Emily to pack their things while he went to look at a house with the realtor. Three hours later, Dana had vanished.

 

No one seemed to care.

 

Mulder called Frohike. Frohike made some calls. Within the hour every policeman in the state cared, as well as an FBI Special Agent named Arthur Dales.

 

*~*~*~*

 

"Mulder," a little voice said from beside his bed. Mulder opened his eyes. "Are you awake, Mulder?"

 

Emily stood clutching her stuffed Kitty. She wore one of Will's old T-shirts, which reached her knees, and her hair was still damp from a midnight bath. It was more of a soak than a bath. Mulder didn’t know what parts he should wash and which parts he shouldn’t, but she'd turned out clean enough.

 

"Are you sick again?"

 

She shook her head and sniffed.

 

"Thirsty?" he guessed. "A bad dream?"

 

"When is Mommy coming back?"

 

"I don't know, honey. The policemen are looking for her."

 

Everyone from the maids to the concierge had offered to take Emily home or to call a nanny to take care of her. Frohike had a sister in Queens who had kids and grandkids; she would be delighted to watch Emily. Byers said Emily could stay with his family; he and Susanne could make room and she could play with their girls. They had a yard and a dog.

 

Hell would freeze first.

 

No, Mulder hadn’t thought to grab a change of clothes for Emily. He could buy her clothes though, or get them from Dana's apartment. He could feed Em and take care of her and keep her safe - even if he couldn't keep Dana safe.

 

"May I sleep with you?" the girl asked.

 

He got as far as saying, "Emily, I don't-" before she climbed into his bed and curled up against his chest in a warm ball of white cotton. "Okay," Mulder amended.

 

"I miss Mommy," Emily told him.

 

"I do too."

 

Mulder put his hand tentatively, then more firmly on her back. He put his chin on top of her head and breathed deeply. She smelled like Dana.

 

"Dad?" Will asked from the doorway, a tall, lurking silhouette.

 

"Are you okay, son?"

 

William should be at his mother's apartment, but he didn't want to go, and Mulder lacked the energy to argue. "Have the police rang?" Will loitered in the doorway. "Is there any word about Miss Scully?"

 

"No," Mulder answered softly. He rubbed Emily's back. "No word yet. Are you okay?"

 

"It's too hot in my room."

 

"Do you want me to call the desk?"

 

"It's cooler in here. Below roasting, anyway. I heard Emily get up." Will flopped across the foot of Mulder’s bed with an 'ooph.' "I was checking on her."

 

"Here." Mulder tossed a pillow to him. "Join the slumber party."

 

"I'm going back to my room so I can roast to a tempting, even, golden brown. I was..." Will exhaled loudly. "Who would take Miss Scully, Dad?"

 

"I don't know, son."

 

"Do you think she's all right?"

 

"I don't know," he answered quietly.

 

"She’s pretty. Would they-" Will realized Emily was listening. "Dad?"

 

Mulder's throat tightened as he answered, "I don't know, William." He took a slow breath. "The police are looking. Everyone's looking."

 

William shifted restlessly, seeming unconvinced. He toyed with Emily's foot, shifted again, sighed, and snapped at his father to stop kicking him in the kidneys.

 

"It's okay, Will," Emily assured him in the darkness. "My mommy will come back, and she'll marry your daddy, and it will all be okay."

 

She sounded so sure, in that moment, Mulder believed her.

 

"You'll be my brother. My big brother," she added as if to clarify.

 

An eerie silence seemed to last minutes rather than seconds.

 

"Okay," his son agreed quietly. "It's a deal."

 

Mulder swallowed. "The men who took your mommy - are they hurting her, Em?"

 

After a pause, Emily answered in the same certain voice, "She's sleeping."

 

"Okay," he answered, as Will had. "We should sleep, too."

 

*~*~*~*

 

Each day of anxious, impotent waiting lasted a century, yet the universe stopped each time the telephone rang. No ransom demand came. No witnesses stepped forwarded. No one called about the missing person posters. Every fingerprint in Dana’s apartment belonged to Dana, Emily, Mulder, or Will. In Mulder’s apartment, after they returned from Las Vegas, Dana had taken off her gold cross necklace to shower. She’d left it in his bathroom, and he hadn't hurried to return it because he knew she’d be back. Dana’s cross remained in the hinged wooden box on his dresser along with his old wedding band, World Series rings, and a dozen pairs of cufflinks. Mulder couldn’t bear to open the box, so he’d worn the same cufflinks for days.

 

Special Agent Arthur Dales worked in the FBI’s DC office but arrived in New York two days after Dana disappeared and hours he’d been assigned the case. Agent Dales seemed rough around the edges but dedicated to his job. He was head of his division – though his division consisted of himself. Dales said he’d worked other cases in which young women mysteriously vanished, endorsement enough for Mulder.

 

The police showed Agent Dales Dana’s apartment. Then, at The Plaza, Mulder told Agent Dales word-for-word what Dana had said: the base in Nevada, the young women inexplicably getting in trouble, the babies disappearing rather than being adopted. Agent Dales asked why Mulder believed Dana. Mulder’s face grew hot, but he answered. Agent Dales scribbled a note in the FBI file. With Emily napping and Will at school, Mulder sat in his living room and answered whether there was blood on the sheets the first night and how many times they’d had been together and if Mulder had been with many other women and if he knew anything about Dana’s menstrual cycle. Dales asked if Mulder ever woke to find Dana missing from their bed or inexplicably undressed or oddly dressed. If he knew or suspected any of his sexual partners fell pregnant. How those pregnancies ended. If he’d describe William or Emily as unusual in any manner. Mulder answered every question. Dales wrote all that down in a new manila file with a battered fountain pen. He took a few photographs of Mulder’s bedroom and terrace. Agent Dales tracked snow from the terrace across the carpet, and he helped himself to an apple from the bowl of fruit in the kitchen. Dana had the grocer deliver the apples and oranges last week because vitamins A and C are important for growing children and “they can’t live on scrambled eggs, Mulder.” And Agent Dales left.

 

Another day passed. And another. The police didn’t call. Agent Dales didn’t call. Dana didn’t call.

 

Mulder’s heart felt like a skinned knee. And no one did anything.

 

"I don't think that's the best plan," Frohike told Mulder again. Frohike sat behind the wide desk in his fancy corner office looking like a displeased hobbit. "I don't think it will help."

 

Mulder paced the length of the room, unshaven and wearing yesterday’s shirt and trousers. Emily waited in the lobby with Frohike’s secretary. "Do it. Offer a bigger reward. Have Langly transfer the money. The police will start to lose interest, so we need to monitor the hospitals and-" He took a shaky breath. "-th-the morgues."

 

"I have that covered, Mulder. She's not-"

 

"Flights. Flights out of New York." Mulder still paced. He reached a wall and turned. "Train passenger lists. Any-"

 

"Mulder," Frohike said sharply, "We’ve had this conversation a dozen times. You pay me to know what I'm talking about, and I'm telling you she's not in New York. Not her, not her body. There's no record of Dana Scully or any woman fitting her description leaving the city. Either she's run so fast and so far I can't find her - which would be unlikely for several reasons, not the least of which is she adores you - or-"  

 

"Or the men Emily is talking about are military men and they took Dana because she told me about her daughter," Mulder finished for him.

 

Frohike tilted back in his big swivel chair and nodded.

 

Mulder stopped pacing. He leaned against the top of one of two wingback chairs that faced his agent’s desk. "Why leave her daughter?"

 

"Emily doesn't know where she came from, but Dana does?"    

 

"So do I.” Mulder threw his hands wide. “Why am I still here? Why am I not missing?"

 

"You and me and Langly and probably Byers," Frohike answered. "We all know something is happening out there in the desert. I'm not sure, Mulder. I know they’re keeping millions of vaccination records and tissue samples, but I don’t know why. Then the files. They’re tracking civilians, and your file had something not in mine: a list of women. Then, there are top-secret aircraft and technology, which makes sense given it's a secret military base. How it all ties together, I have no idea, and my source has vanished."

 

"Agent Dales says the FBI doesn’t keep vaccination records or files on anyone except criminals and crime victims. Byers said he went in circles with the military."   

 

"So did I, but I'm still looking. Someone’s willing to talk for the right price."

 

Mulder ran his fingers through his hair. He needed a haircut. "Frohike, what if it's not that Dana told me? What if it's that I'm asking questions? Doing the opposite of what I promised her? What if they took her to get me to back off?" He leaned on the upholstered chair again and tried to get his brain to focus with the three hours’ sleep he'd had in the last three days. "Stop looking into the base. Have Byers reverse everything he's done legally and you stop everything you've done illegally."

 

"But-"

 

Mulder shook his head. "No. Stop looking. If you can't find Dana, at least stop antagonizing the men who took her."

 

Frohike’s eyebrows drew closer together. "Something is happening to the women on that base!"

 

"Dana’s not on that base anymore!" Mulder shouted back. His knuckles whitened as he gripped the top of the chair. "Someone else can spend his life chasing after Martians or Nazis or conspiracies or whatever you think is out there on that base. You work for me, and I want Dana back."

 

Frohike’s chair creaked. He got up, walked around his desk, pointed sternly to one of the armchairs, and ordered, “Sit, Mulder.”

 

Out of years of habit, Mulder sat. Frohike’s leather desk chair swiveled a few times in his absence.

 

Frohike sank into the other upholstered armchair with a weary grunt. "Mulder, I’ve said you don't get your money's worth out of me. You have to be the most decent, brilliant professional athlete I've ever known. When my source read me the list of women, I was surprised it was that long."

 

"Do you have a point, Frohike?"

 

"All professional athletes are genetic anomalies, but you could have as easily become an Olympic skier or ice skater or a marathon runner if those sports had paid you. You're naturally lean, muscular, agile. You're in better shape than most twenty-year-olds. You can run and not get tired. You sleep less than most people. You can eat less. You can drink more alcohol. Byers says you're an uncanny marksman. The U.S. Army would love a whole battalion of soldiers like you."

 

Mulder slouched forward and rested his elbows on his knees. "And I'm hardly ever sick at sea. Are you flirting with me or are we still getting to the point?"

 

"You're bright, too. You could have been a professor, a scientist - anything you wanted. And sometimes, Mulder, you're spooky. I think about calling you, pick up the telephone, and you're on the line. There's the memory thing you can do: names, numbers, languages. What if you'd never met Phoebe, Mulder? What if that fluke caused you to do something with your life you were never meant to do?"

 

"My son is not a fluke," Mulder said through clenched teeth.

 

"I understand. I understand you're a good guy and a good father and you did what you had to do, but what if this is a second chance? What if you're supposed to ask questions about what the government is doing?” Frohike leaned closer. “Because I promise our government is doing something. You are different, Mulder-"

 

"Yes, I'm different.” Mulder let his head hang. His eyes burned, his temples throbbed. “You're right. Take away baseball and I'm the weird, brainy rich kid with the missing sister. With the drunk father and the crazy mother. The kid who lives inside his own head and stutters if he gets nervous. I finally got more, and I'm not losing it because of some foolish quest."

 

"What if there's a reason for that, too?"

 

Mulder raised his face to peer at the little man. "I don't follow."

 

"A reason you're different. Let's say the U.S. government continued or even originated, the Nazi eugenics experiments. They choose the smartest and the healthiest men and women and make sure they have children together by whatever means necessary. Their children have children and they start to create a superior race. I think you're one of those 'arranged' children, like Emily is."

 

"I think you're insane." Mulder was out of the chair. He stood over Frohike with his hands on his hips. "The U.S. government wants colorblind alcoholics with bad knees and no sense of direction?"

 

"They're building a better human: smarter, healthier, more athletic. And they're doing it against people's will. Dana was easy; the government had no trouble with her. You are more difficult to control, so they keep track of the women you're with, probably even arranging a few and hoping they'd conceive."

 

"First of all, Dana is not easy.” Mulder’s voice grew increasingly loud. “Don't you dare say that!"

 

Frohike opened his mouth but didn't get a chance to speak.

 

Mulder paced again. "No one 'arranged' for me to be with any woman. Aside from the one I married and the one I'm gonna marry, I was either drunk or in the middle of a war scared to death I would die." He reached a wall, gritted his teeth, and gave the plaster a few threatening taps with his fist. "So Emily and I are superior humans, but William is a fluke who screwed up my life?” He flung his hand angrily in Frohike’s direction. “Go to Hell!"

 

“Mulder-”

 

The office door opened. Dana’s daughter carried stuffed Kitty and ignored Frohike’s secretary’s plea to come back. Emily had taken off her shoes, and her new white socks had dirty black soles. Despite Macy’s selling Mulder a bouquet of little dresses, Em wore the overalls and sweater she had on when Mulder found her outside Dana’s apartment.

 

He picked the child up. Her skin felt less fevered. The pills Will’s doctor prescribed were working, but Em still wouldn’t eat. This morning, Mulder had offered a sliced apple and an orange. Both were declined, and Emily had donated her scrambled eggs to Will.

 

Frohike’s secretary stood in the doorway ready to take Emily. Mulder shook his head, and the door closed.

 

Mulder exhaled, gave Emily’s blonde head a kiss, carried her to an armchair, and sat down.

 

Emily asked in a raspy whisper, “Did you find Mommy?”

 

“Not yet.” Something sticky made a matted tangle above the girl’s ear. Mulder examined the stiff strands of hair, but let the spot stay. “Does your throat still hurt?”

 

The girl nodded miserably.

 

Glass clinked against wood. Ice rattled. Mulder looked up. Melvin Frohike poured a can of pineapple juice from his liquor cabinet into a highball glass of ice. He added a little straw and brought the glass to Emily. Putting Kitty aside, Emily held the glass with both hands and took a sip. She grimaced as she swallowed, but she sipped again. Frohike brought Mulder club soda over ice. Mulder’s glass remained on the coaster.

 

“I’m sorry,” Mulder said wearily. He rubbed Emily’s back. “I know you’re trying to help. I know everyone’s trying to help. I...” He had no idea how that sentence ended.

 

“I know.” Frohike leaned back against his desk, facing Mulder. On the wall, a framed photograph of the Yankees’ 1927 lineup bore every players’ autograph. “I’m calling a doctor. You need to sleep, Mulder. He’ll give you some pills. I’ll get Will after school, and my sister can watch Emily for a few hours.” 

 

Mulder shook his head. He didn’t want to sleep. During the day, if he kept busy, a minute might pass without worrying about Dana. If he slept, he dreamed, and every crime scene photo of any woman he’d ever seen formed a kaleidoscope of horror in his head.

 

The memory thing Mulder could do: he remembered every monster he’d studied at Oxford. His mind pasted Dana’s face into photographs of mutilated women all the way back to Jack the Ripper. Mulder knew the chances of finding a missing woman alive after more than 48 hours. He even recalled himself as a university student standing in a padded white room and trying to interview a woman the London police had found alive. Years after the monsters who kidnapped, raped, and tortured her were hanged, the woman had still huddled in the corner wearing a straightjacket and watching Mulder with dead eyes.

 

“He had brown hair,” a little voice rasped. Mulder looked down. Emily said, “One of the men who took Mommy – he had brown hair.”

 

Frohike stepped toward her. “Brown hair?”

 

She nodded. “Like Mulder.”

 

Mulder asked, “Can you remember anything else about the man, Em?”

 

She blinked a few times but shook her head ‘no.’

 

“Anything, honey? What the men wore or if they had a car or- Was there anything about the men who took Mommy you didn’t tell the police?”

 

Another wide-eyed shake of her head.

 

Mulder started to speak again, but Frohike beat him to it. “That’s good, Emily. I’ll tell the police detective.”

 

Mulder said quickly, “Em, there are artists who work with the policemen. You could talk with one, and he might be able to draw the men you saw.”

 

“Mulder,” Frohike said warningly. His agent furrowed his brow. The chances of a four-year-old – especially a sick, frightened four-year-old who’d been quizzed repeatedly – providing anything useful to the police were slim-to-none.

 

“I know,” Mulder responded. “I’ll pay. Find a sketch artist who freelances.” 

 

Frohike sighed unhappily but picked up his telephone.

 

Emily took another sip of juice.

 

The sketch artist arrived within twenty minutes and worked with Emily for over an hour. The end result were two $25 sketches. One looked vaguely like Mulder or Will, and other like a grim Boris Karloff. Frohike had the sketches sent to the detective. Or, at least, Frohike told Em he sent them. The NYPD neglected to send a thank-you note.

 

Emily did drink another can of pineapple juice, at least.

 

Another day passed.

 

And another. Mulder put on Dana’s delicate cross necklace. His shirt collar hid it, and he knew the cross was safe. Mostly, he wore the necklace so he didn’t have to look at it.

 

The sketches hadn’t made a difference. A larger reward hadn’t helped. Private detectives hadn’t found any leads. Even Mulder admitting things to Agent Dales that would have caused Frohike a conniption fit, had his agent known, hadn’t done any good. Drag the rivers, sift the beaches, shout to the heavens - no amount of money or manpower could find a woman not there to be found.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Will fidgeted if he was in Big Trouble, like his mother did, which meant it doubly annoyed Mulder. As Mulder drove, William banged his knees into the dashboard, jostled Emily beside him in the front seat - which he had been warned twice not to do - and started to change the radio station. After a glance at his father's face, Will elected to suffer through music from the Colored station. After meeting with Will's school principal thirty minutes earlier, Mulder's face achieved a shade seldom seen in humans.

 

"I'm sorry." Will crossed his arms on his chest and slouched down. "It's not as if we did anything."

 

"Don't-" Mulder looked at him and held up one finger. "Don't speak. In case you don't realize it, you're about two words away from a boys' school in Siberia, so do not say a word!" That order lasted three minutes before Mulder exploded. "What were you thinking, son?"

 

His son managed to look even more miserable. "I'm sorry," he insisted yet again.

 

"Did you even think about the consequences?"

 

Will shrugged and looked puzzled.

 

"Can you imagine the telephone call I'll get from her father? He's the commissioner of the Bureau of Internal Revenue. You and I are going to get audited on our income taxes every year for the rest of our lives. I'd love to be able to claim his fast daughter talked my innocent son into it, but I'm betting that's not the case. What if one thing had led to another? Did you think about that?" Mulder demanded angrily.

 

"I'm not daft, Dad."

 

"Neither am I, Will," he snapped back, but wished he hadn't.

 

Before he could say anything else, Emily sniffed and wiped her nose. "Mulder?" she said uncertainly. Her hand came away bloody. "Will?"

 

"It's okay, honey." Mulder reached for his handkerchief and passed it to Will. "Pinch her nose shut." He tried to watch them and the mid-morning traffic at the same time. He had no place to pull over. "Gently, Will. It's just a nose bleed, Em. It's okay. It'll stop in a second."

 

"It's okay." Will added his handkerchief to her nose as the first one soaked through. Emily started to cough and cry, and Will glanced at his father.

 

"It looks like more blood than it is," Mulder said, though it looked like a lot to him, too. "See if there are paper napkins in the glove box."

 

One handed, Will fished out a stack of napkins Dana had stowed there, and added them to the wad against Emily's nose. After a tense minute, the bleeding subsided. Will cleaned off her face and his hands. He pulled Emily onto his lap. He wiped away her tears and draped his coat over her, looking like a good big brother. "You sprung a leak," Will said as she leaned her head against his chest. "I should call you 'Squirt.'"

 

Emily sniffed miserably. Her chin quivered, and she’d left a bloody handprint on Will’s school shirt. She'd felt awful for days but the doctor couldn't figure out the problem. The doctor kept running tests and scheduling appointments with specialists, but didn't do anything to make her better.

 

"It's okay," Mulder promised. "We're almost there."

 

"I want Mommy," Emily managed tearfully.

 

"I know. Me too, honey." Mulder couldn't remember the last time he'd slept more than an hour. His churning stomach and burning chest indicated he should consume something besides coffee. At a stoplight, Mulder reached over and touched Emily's face. "Everything's going to be okay. It's all under control. It just doesn't look like it."

 

Will rubbed her back. The boy watched his hand and looked embarrassed.

 

Emily sniffed again.

 

"Dad, I am sorry," William said after a few more blocks, sounding as if he honestly might be. "You have enough trouble; I didn't mean to cause more. I do want to live with you and Miss Scully. I know that wasn't right - at school. Or respectful. I-I wasn't thinking. I should have told her not to. She's a nice girl."

 

"She's not a nice girl," Mulder responded obliquely, given their miserable four-year-old audience. "or she wouldn't have been doing that. We've talked about this, Will."

 

"I wish you wouldn't say that," Will answered in a careful tone. "She's my girlfriend. I let her do something I shouldn't because I love her and she loves me. I wasn't thinking. I made a mistake, and it's my responsibility, but that doesn't change that she's a nice girl."

 

Mulder worried his upper lip between his teeth. "Where did a nice fifteen-year-old girl learn to do that?"

 

"She's had other boyfriends. But I don't care. You don't care."

 

"What do you mean I don't care?"

 

"About-" Will cut his eyes silently down at Emily.

 

"It's not the same, William."

 

"Why is it not the same?" his son asked. "Everyone makes mistakes. Love is wonderful and thrilling, and sometimes people in love make mistakes. They don't always do the right thing."

 

"They aren't supposed to purposefully do the wrong thing," Mulder responded angrily. "You know right from wrong. And just because you or she make one mistake doesn't mean it's okay to keep making mistakes."

 

"You are a hypocrite," Will accused him.

 

"You are fifteen years old!"

 

"Pot, kettle, black," his son shot back.

 

"It's not the same," Mulder repeated angrily, his face flushing again. "Dana and I are adults. We're getting married. We want to have a family. Can you say that?"

 

"Can I say I want a normal family? Damn straight I can," Will said coolly. "See what you can do about that, Daddy-O."

 

Mulder gritted his teeth so hard his jaws ached. His knuckles were white on the hand on the steering wheel. The radio played but the car was otherwise silent except for Emily's sniffs.

 

Will muttered, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

 

"Okay," Mulder managed to say.

 

"I do like Miss Scully. I miss her too."

 

"I know."

 

Will slouched down in the seat. "Fine. Send me to Siberia."

 

"I'm not sending you to Siberia, Will," Mulder answered, his voice falsely calm. "I don't want you to make the same- I want you- I want you to get to be a child a little longer."

 

"Okay," Will agreed emptily, and rubbed Emily's back again.

 

Mulder knew Will didn't understand, but Mulder didn't say anything else because he couldn't think of anything else to say.

 

Ten minutes later, Mulder got out of the Cadillac in front of The Plaza before the valet even neared the door. "Come on, Em," he said, and reached back to pick up the child, who still wore pajamas and hadn’t yet brushed her teeth today.   

 

"I don't get to drive to the car park, do I?" Will asked from the passenger seat. A pile of bloody napkins and handkerchiefs lay at his feet. "You mean it this time."

 

Parking the car had been a perk of turning fifteen, but any perk not a mandatory bodily function got revoked the moment the principal explained to Mulder what his son and some tramp had been doing while skipping second period.

 

"Out, William. Get out, go upstairs, go in your bedroom, and don't come out for a long time."

 

*~*~*~*

 

Despite Mulder knowing he’d left Frohike, Langly, and Byers sitting at his dining room table, their presence momentarily surprised him. Their monthly meeting had been relocated to Mulder’s apartment so Emily could rest and so Mulder would home if Dana or the police or FBI called. 

 

Instead, Will’s school principal had called.

 

Mulder carried Emily inside the apartment, tossed his hat toward the coatrack, and pushed the door shut with the heel of his shoe. Will slung his book bag across the floor of the foyer. He stomped past the business meeting on hold in the dining room without acknowledging any of the men. 

 

"What did he do?" Frohike asked.

 

"He made a mistake," Mulder answered crisply.

 

Will's bedroom door slammed.

 

Mulder sighed. He put Emily on the couch and turned on the television set. After draping a blanket over Em and stuffed Kitty, Mulder resumed his seat. "Thank you for waiting."

 

Byers tapped a pile of typewritten pages into a neat stack against the tabletop. "A few more things, and we'll be out of your hair." He looked at Frohike reluctantly.

 

Frohike gave ‘go ahead’ nod. Langly turned to a fresh page on his steno pad and slowly leaned back from the table. Mulder sensed there’d been a tense and lengthy discussion during his absence.

 

"The children, Mulder.” Byers cleared his throat. “You don't have custody of Emily Scully or William. Phoebe's attorney is calling. You can't keep Will, not if she wants him. We can get a court date and try to change the visitation schedule, but you can't just keep him."

 

Langly focused intently on the blank, green sheet of paper.

 

"They're okay. Em's okay." Mulder spun a paper clip nervously. Dana's definition of 'okay' would not include Emily staring at the television in her pajamas all day or Will getting caught half-naked with a girl in the boys’ locker room. "I could hire a nanny. I could get Nanny Marie. Why can't I keep Emily until Dana comes back?"

 

"I found a grandmother in Washington D.C.," Byers said quietly. "Dana's mother. I should have contacted her months ago, but - well, you know why I didn't. She wants to talk with you, and it sounds like she might be willing to take Emily. Talk to her, Mulder. Margaret Scully sounded like a nice lady and concerned about her daughter. If nothing else, she would take Emily for a week."

 

Frohike said, "You're coming apart at the seams, Mulder. Let Mrs. Scully take care of Emily while you find Dana. As soon as Dana's back, Emily comes back."

 

Langly picked little pieces of paper from the metal rings at the top of his steno pad.

 

Mulder held out his hand for the phone number. He crumpled and shoved it into his pocket. "And Will?" he asked tiredly. "I'll pay Phoebe whatever she wants, but I want Will. He doesn't want to live with her. He wants to live with Dana and me."

 

"Dana's not here, Mulder." Byers still sounded like he soothed a child. "It's you. I spoke with co-counsel. We don't think you could get even joint custody of him. We recommend you follow the schedule the judge set, and when Dana's back and things settle down, we'll go back to court."

 

"I'm his father." 

 

"But she's his mother. You know what Phoebe's going to say." Frohike spoke even softer than Byers. "You didn't see William again until he was six. Don't tell me that wasn't your fault, because I know it wasn't, but it's still true. Phoebe's attorney will say you're a playboy with a history of alcohol problems - which means 'a drunk' to a judge - who's rarely spent more than a few days at a time with his son in fifteen years. This is the only time you've ever taken care of him on your own, and Will's getting in fights, he's skipping school-"

 

Mulder opened his mouth, but Frohike held up his hand. Langly didn’t look away from the notepad.

 

Frohike said, "It's Byers' job to tell you what would happen if you go back to court. Aside from seeing it in the papers, she'll make that boy testify. You know she will. He's seen you drunk. He's walked in on you with a woman. He knows you and Dana spent nights together. He'll have to admit all that on the stand."

 

Mulder's mouth remained agape. He had no idea Will told Frohike those things.

 

"Byers or the judge will ask him what he's seen his mother do, what she's said to him, and that's not pretty either," Frohike said. "I'm certainly not saying he's better off with Phoebe, but I'm saying a judge might. Phoebe's attorney will say Dana abandoned her daughter. An illegitimate daughter you let your impressionable young son be around. It would be a long, nasty, public custody fight, it will be horrible for Will, and I'm afraid you’d come out of it not being able to see him at all. Leave the schedule the way it is, and he'll be over here all the time anyway."

 

"Listen to him, Mulder," Byers urged. "He's right."

 

"Will's not going back to her," Mulder insisted. "Her housekeeper takes care of him. Phoebe doesn't know where he is half the time, and she doesn't care. As long as I keep paying her, why does she even want him?"

 

Frohike leaned forward, both hands pressed against the tabletop and his brow furrowed. "Phoebe doesn't want him, Mulder," he said angrily. "She's never wanted him. She doesn't want him with you. She couldn't care less about hurting that boy as long as she can use him to-"

 

Langly cleared his throat and looked toward the hallway. Where Mulder saw William standing.

 

Mulder’s heart pounded. "You're supposed to be in your room, William," he said shakily. "I told you to stay in your room."

 

"I-I came to see if I could watch the telly." A hurt crease appeared between the boy’s eyebrows. "I guess not."

 

"No."

 

Will turned away and walked quickly to his bedroom.

 

Mulder laid his head down on the cool table and closed his eyes. "Shit. He heard that."

 

"I am so sorry, Mulder," Frohike said quietly. "I'll talk to him. I'll call him-"

 

"Out." Mulder didn’t look up or possess the energy to yell and cry at the same time. It was one or the other, and Mulder leaned toward crying. "Everybody out. We're done. Get a court date, Byers. He's not going back."

 

Frohike chair squealed against the floor as he stood. Byers and Langly followed his example.

 

"Come to dinner tonight," Byers offered. "I'll send our nanny over for the kids, and Susanne can get some food into you before your clothes start falling off."

 

"Get out," Mulder ordered.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder had insisted Emily wear a dress instead of her denim overalls, and he regretted his decision as soon as they left The Plaza this morning. Her thin tights and dress shoes – both of which she despised - offered little protection against the cold, while her new winter coat was more pretty and itchy than warm. Mulder kept his trench coat around her as she slept on his lap during the flight, but a cold, raw wind sliced at them as soon as they stepped off the plane in Washington, DC. William shivered morosely in his denim jeans and leather jacket. Emily’s forehead felt hot again, so they waited inside the terminal and away from the doors.

 

Mulder shifted Emily on his hip as he looked around the airport, trying to imagine what Margaret or Bill Scully might look like.

 

He knew as soon as they stepped through the terminal’s front doors: a small, composed brunette woman with a tall, powerfully built man with Dana's coloring. Margaret Scully touched her son's shoulder and had him to wait at the entrance. She walked toward Mulder and Emily alone. Behind her, Bill Scully leaned against a wall and folded his arms unhappily.

 

"Mrs. Scully?" Mulder asked to make sure. "I-I'm Fox Mulder. Look, honey: Grammy." Emily kept her head buried against his shoulder. "She's shy. She's not feeling well."

 

"Thank you for bringing her.” Margaret Scully said awkwardly, “She's gotten so big.”

 

Mulder smoothed Em's blonde hair. "It's Grammy. Grammy doesn't know Kitty. Show her Kitty?"

 

Emily shook her head. She clutched the threadbare stuffed cat and sniffed. "Thirsty," she croaked in a little voice.

 

"Does your throat hurt again?"

 

She nodded but still kept her cheek against his coat. Mulder signaled Will, who left his assigned seat across the terminal and came to take Em.

 

"Get her something cold to drink while I talk with Mrs. Scully," Mulder told his son. "Juice." He set down Emily's new suitcase to dig out his wallet. "Go with Will, Em."

 

Will betrayed his cool exterior by taking Emily’s hand and saying, "Come on, Squirt."

 

"She's sick?" Mrs. Scully watched them walk away.

 

Mulder realized he hadn’t introduced William. "She's been sick since New Year's. That was my son. William. There's um-" He pulled the envelope out of his coat pocket. "I-I-I took her to my son's doctor, who sent her to a specialist in Allentown, Pennsylvania. She's been to see him once, but Dr. Scanlon thinks something is wrong with her immune system. He wants her to see a Dr. Klemper, who's a genetics doctor. They're still running tests, but their cards are in here. Her appointment with Dr. Klemper is in a week. There's also a number for Richard Langly. He's an accountant. He'll take care of her medical expenses, your travel arrangements, and anything else she needs; call him or send him the bills."

 

Mulder examined the polished floor closely for any flaws.

 

"You don't need to pay me to take care of my granddaughter, Mr. Mulder. Dana can be a willful, spirited girl. She’s too smart for her own good, sometimes, but we’ve always been proud of Dana. Whatever mistake she made, it's not the child's fault."

 

He shifted his feet and shoved his hands deep in his pockets. "There's a card from an FBI Agent named Arthur Dales here in D.C. He's been working with the NYPD to find Dana, so if you can think of anything helpful-"

 

As if he hadn’t spoken, she asked, "Are you Emily’s father, Mr. Mulder?"

 

"No.” He glanced at Will and Emily at the counter of the airport cafe. With all the other tests going on, Mulder had Dr. Scanlon check his blood type against Emily's and Dana's in case there was a match. No match. “I’ve known Dana a few months. We’re engaged to be married."

 

She took the envelope.

 

“I know. Dana called me on New Year’s Day.” Mrs. Scully stood ramrod straight. “I recognized your name. My husband hated the New York Yankees.”

 

“They just paid me to hit baseballs.” He shifted his feet again. “I love your daughter, Mrs. Scully. And your granddaughter. If you change your mind about wanting Emily- If I could convince a judge I was Emily’s father, I wouldn’t be standing here.”

 

Mrs. Scully looked both disapproving and unconvinced.

 

"William and I will be at my mother’s house in Boston for a few days,” Mulder said, “then back in New York. Sometimes Em likes to talk on the phone, so call and reverse the long distance charges. There's a book she likes at bedtime; it's in her bag."

 

Will returned, leading Emily across the terminal as slowly as possible. "I bought her a grape Nehi. They don’t have juice."

 

Mulder squatted down. He buttoned Emily's coat and put on her mittens. "You're going to stay with Grammy. Remember, we talked about it?"

 

Emily nodded with her purple-stained lips pursed. The furrow between her eyebrows made her look exactly like Dana. Mulder frowned back, shoving his lower lip out clownishly as he reached in the pocket of his trench coat. As he put his old Yankees uniform cap on her head, he whispered, "You have my hat and I have Mommy's necklace. When Mommy comes back, we trade. I get my hat back, and what does Mommy get?"

 

"Kisses." Her chin started to tremble. Emily pulled his shirt collar to the side, looking for the gold chain he'd shown her earlier. "Mommy gets kisses."

 

"Big kisses," Mulder said softly. He pressed a kiss against her warm forehead. "Go with Grammy. Hurry, before it starts raining again."

 

"You'll find Mommy?"

 

"I'll keep looking." He blinked quickly and sniffed. Emily’s chin continued to tremble. Mulder amended, “I’ll find her. I will. I’ll find her and we’ll be a family and William will be your big brother, like you said.”

 

Behind Mulder, Will cleared his throat. The intercom announced their flight to Boston was boarding.

 

"Ready, Emily? It's time for him to go. You may call Mr. Mulder tonight. Is that all right, Mr. Mulder?" Margaret Scully asked.

 

Mulder nodded. He stood up and blinked again as Emily took her grandmother's hand. Bill Scully walked over and picked up Emily’s suitcase. Bill made a point to glare at Mulder before he turned away.

 

*~*~*~*

 

The sky over Boston was gray as Mulder and Will landed, dark gray during their taxi ride, and now a solid black layer of clouds blocking the moon and stars. His mother’s new maid had a fire going in every hearth and clean linens on the beds and dinner waiting. Mulder’s mother emerged briefly from her bedroom to acknowledge their presence.

 

Will sat at a table looking studious, and Mulder was three-quarters of the way through his third long-distance reading of “The Velveteen Rabbit” when Mrs. Scully picked up the phone. 

 

"She's asleep, Mr. Mulder."

 

"Good. Is she okay?" Mulder rolled his neck from side to side.  

 

"Considering the situation, I think she's doing well."

 

After several seconds of silence, Mulder opened his mouth to say goodnight.

 

"I don't think I said 'thank you,' Mr. Mulder. I appreciate what you've done. You must care for Emily and Dana very much."

 

He worried his lip until it started to throb. "I do."

 

Another pause. "We'll call for a story tomorrow night, all right?"

 

"That would be great. Goodnight." 

 

Mulder replaced the receiver on the phone and stared at the logs burning in the fireplace across the room. Despite seeing the fire, he couldn't feel the warmth. From the time he was a teenager, there was never any warmth. His parents owned a lovely house in a lovely section of Boston, but it was hollow. After Sam vanished, his parents' souls left as well, leaving their bodies behind as placeholders.

 

Mulder would not be hollow. Even if he never found Dana, he would not be hollow.

 

"Daddy-O? Are you okay?" William looked up from the homework he had to do during his expulsion from school.

 

Mulder exhaled. He ran his fingers through his hair and got up from the couch. Going to the mantel, he looked over the framed photos, noting they all predated Samantha's disappearance. Life had stopped after Samantha.

 

He would not be hollow. Will needed a father. Emily was in Washington and she needed a bedtime story. Mulder could not be hollow.

 

He felt the frigid winter wind blowing inside him.

 

“Dad?” Will repeated.

 

"I was getting Em to sleep. It sounds like she's doing fine. Yes, I'm okay."

 

"Good." Will closed his textbook. "It shows." A moment later, his son asked, "What happened to your sister, Dad?"

 

"We never found out. Like Dana, she was just gone."

 

After he said them, the words echoed inside his mind: like Dana, she was just gone. The police searched for months but found no trace of Samantha. Mulder’s father began to drink more, and his mother spent days locked in her bedroom. Though pictures of Sam hung everywhere, Samantha wasn't mentioned, she wasn't mourned - she was just gone.

 

"How old was she?"

 

"Nine."

 

No pictures of Mulder alone rested on the polished mantel. He saw childhood photographs of him with Samantha, and of Samantha alone, but none of Mulder alone. He knew they existed; he remembered posing. The photos weren't on his parents' mantel. As if Mulder was an afterthought - unimportant except for his sister.

 

He’d been a high school baseball and track star. Highest marks in his class and admitted early to Oxford. He’d been a decorated army officer, but Mulder wondered if his parents ever wanted him at all.

 

"You never found her?" Will asked, as the fire crackled in the hearth. "Not even her body?"

 

"No," Mulder answered softly. "No, we never did."

 

*~*~*~*

 

"Try it again." Mulder reached in to re-tighten the plug wires. It was fruitless. Mulder knew little about auto mechanics, and the exotic Porsche engine baffled him. Luckily, his son hadn't seen his perplexed expression when Mulder first opened the hood and found nothing; the German engineers had put the engine in the trunk.

 

Will turned the key and got a sluggish coughing noise from the engine. He conveyed that information to his father by yelling, "It's still not turning over!"

 

"Are you giving it enough gas?"

 

"Was I supposed to be giving it gas?"

 

Mulder looked at his son suspiciously. He'd spent the afternoon trying to get his father's sports car to start: another in a series of projects his mother assigned him the moment they arrived in Boston. Teena Mulder didn't want to talk, but she could still make a to-do list.

 

Will got out of the driver's seat. He came back to lean on a fender and watch Mulder tinkering. "I've passed peckish and am rounding the bend to starving. How much longer before you tell Grandmother you have no bloody idea what you're doing?"

 

"About ten bloody seconds." Mulder gave the distributor cap a whack with the wrench. "We tackle the dripping bathroom faucet after dinner. Bring a mop."

 

"You are not able to fix it, Fuchs?" Teena Mulder said worriedly as she entered the carriage house the Mulders used as a garage. She wore her robe over her house dress, and her house slippers, even in the snow.

 

Mulder wiped his hands on a rag and rolled his shirtsleeves down. "I think it's sat too long, Mutter. It's practically new but it needs plugs, hoses, belts, a battery. I'd rather a mechanic did it so nothing gets missed. Vater loved his cars." 

 

"You will call someone, yes?" Despite leaving Germany forty years ago, her pronunciation and bearing retained the elegance of the old world. "Your father took care of these things."

 

"Ja, Mutter," Mulder said soothingly. "Hast du Hunger? It's dinner time. May Will and I take you out?"

 

She looked tired, and shook her head slowly. The overhead light glinted off her coiffed sliver hair. "Nein. I do not think so, Fuchs."

 

"We could bring something back? From the deli, maybe?"

 

"As you like. Do you need the money?"

 

Mulder laughed before he could catch himself, and tried to conceal it with a cough. "Um, no. I think I can cover it."

 

"Have a good time." She turned and made her way across the snow-covered backyard and into the big, empty house without ever acknowledging Will.

 

"Wait, Mutter-" Mulder hurried after her, catching up as she reached the back porch. "What should we bring for you?"

 

"I am tired. I will go to bed. You have a good time with the boy," she said dismissively.

 

"You said I could come. You said I could bring William. I don't understand what's wrong or why you're avoiding us. He's your grandson. Give him a chance. He's a good boy."

 

"I am sure he is." Teena patted his shoulder and put her hand on the doorknob. "It is nice you spend time with him."

 

"He's my son. Of course I spend time with him," Mulder answered irritably.

 

After a frantic electrical whirring from the garage and two mechanical coughs, he heard a warm purring ignition sound as Bill Mulder's sports car came back to life. Mulder turned. Will appeared in the back yard, ankle-deep in the snow and grinning.

 

"Yes!” Mulder raised his arms in triumph. “Good job, son. What did you do?"

 

"May we please go to dinner?"

 

"With all due haste. Mutter-"

 

The back door closed, leaving Mulder alone on the cold porch.

 

*~*~*~*

 

"What about a cannon?" Will asked as he scanned the menu board.

 

"I said, don't take it as canon, but the last time I was here, everything was good. Twenty-some years ago, though. Twenty-three." Mulder looked around at the familiar deli. At less than two miles from his parent's house, many meals during his last years in Boston got ordered at this counter.

 

"You would have been sixteen. What happened? I know you didn't learn to cook."

 

"I graduated early from high school." Mulder decided Dana would like fruit salad and a turkey sandwich, but quickly pushed the idea out of his brain in order to remain sane. “I left for Oxford.”

 

"It took you seven years to not finish university?" Will asked skeptically. "You should lay off me about my grades."

 

"What?"

 

"You left for Oxford at sixteen; you and Mother got married when you were twenty-three. That's seven years."

 

"I have my AB: my four year. I was working on my doctorate." He said quickly, "How 'bout a Reuben, Will?"

 

Will raised his eyebrows. "Doctor Mulder?" 

 

"Isn't that funny?" he said lightly.

 

"How close were you to finishing?" Will moved down the counter so they were next in line.

 

"A long way," Mulder lied. "Hey - they still have milkshakes. They have the best strawberry-"

 

"You quit because of me."

 

"I quit to play ball for the Yankees," Mulder said. "Come on, Will. Figure out what you want to eat. We need to get home; Emily's going to call in half an hour."

 

"How is it your American League batting stats start when I was three months old, but your and Mother's wedding was six months before I was born?"

 

"Tell her what you want." Mulder gestured to the cashier.

 

As they waited for their food a few minutes later, William said quietly, "I'm not going to see her when I go back to school: the girl I got in trouble with. I'm not going to cause any more trouble."

 

Mulder had been scanning the room for something to talk about. For the first few seconds, he only heard 'girl,' and 'in trouble.' "You what?" he said sharply.

 

"I'm not going get in any more trouble at school. Or at home. I promise. May we go back to New York?"  

 

"We'll go back in a few days. I'd like for you to get to know Grandmother."

 

"Oh, she bloody hates me." Will said. "She treats me like I'm invisible. She's worse than Mother."

 

"She doesn't hate you. Last year, my father had died. Now she's... She's been like this since my sister disappeared."  

 

"Daddy-O, I know Mr. Byers and Mother's attorney met today. About me."

 

"You should go to work for the FBI, William." Mulder grabbed a few napkins in anticipation of whenever they got their food.

 

"What do you think anyone could say about you or Mother I don't know?" Will pleaded. "I don't care. Miss Scully isn't in a South End deli, Dad, and she's not in Grandmother Mulder's garage. I can't live with you unless Miss Scully comes home and you get married. How will you find her if you're not looking?"

 

Mulder stared at the short-order cook, psychically willing him to hurry, and he didn't answer Will. In truth, Mulder had no place left to look. No place to even begin looking. Like Samantha, Dana vanished without a trace.

 

The bell on the foggy glass door jingled, and a woman’s voice asked, "Fox?" sounding surprised. "Fox, so good to see you again."

 

Mulder blinked; he couldn't place her. Fans assumed he knew them because they knew his face, but few people called him 'Fox.'

 

"Diana," she said. "Diana Fowley. We met last year."

 

Mulder thought another moment. He nodded uncomfortably. "Diana. Good to see you again. It's been a long time."

 

"It's been too long," she said, sounding too warm. "What brings you to Boston again, Fox?"

 

"The same as last time; I'm visiting my mother." Mulder glanced again to see if their food might be ready. "Diana, this is my son, William."

 

"Hello, William."

 

"I am pleased to meet you, Mrs. Fowley."

 

"Miss." She turned her attention and bosom toward Mulder. Behind her, Will made a rude face at his father. "We should get together, catch up, Fox."

 

"Oh, not much to tell." Mulder gratefully grabbed the bag of soup and sandwiches off the counter. "It was good seeing you again, Diana."

 

"You know where to find me if you change your mind. I'm staying at the same hotel." She smiled and turned to get in line.

 

Mulder nodded hastily, and backed out the door and into the snowstorm.

 

*~*~*~*

 

"Take your foot off the gas before you flood it." Mulder watched through the driver's side window of the Porsche to see what the boy might be doing wrong. "Is the clutch in-"

 

"I know how to do it, Daddy-O," William shot back. "It won't start!"

 

"It was running fine. Let me try."

 

Will skulked out of the driver's seat and stood in the snow beside Bill Mulder's silver sports car with his arms folded. Mulder turned the key several times with his numb fingers, not even getting the engine to turn over.

 

"It won't start, Will."

 

"You don’t say?"

 

"Yes, I do say," Mulder answered with an equal amount of sarcasm. He opened the trunk so he could stare at the engine before he gave up and they walked back to the house.

 

"Are you having car trouble?" the woman from the deli asked, clutching a steaming cup of coffee. "What a beautiful machine. Is this yours, Fox?"

 

"It was my father's. Will and I had it running this afternoon, but-" Mulder leaned over the engine, looking for things to fiddle with. He had no idea, but he wanted to be anywhere else.

 

Diana lingered, watching over his shoulder. Will glanced at the engine was well, checked a few things, and shrugged, which meant they were doomed.

 

"I think the fuel line is frozen," Mulder announced and slammed the trunk down.

 

Will mouthed silently, “Are you daft?” from behind Diana.

 

"I have a car." Diana gestured across the street.

 

"No, it's not far. Come on, Will." Mulder pulled his gloves on and buttoned up his coat. He picked up the bag from the deli and locked the car. "We'll call a tow truck tomorrow."

 

"It's no trouble." She leaned close to Mulder, whispering. "No hard feelings, okay?"

 

Mulder would miss Emily's call if they had to walk home. He weighed the options and decided Diana the lesser evil. "Um, okay. Thanks. It is just a few blocks."

 

Will put his hands on his hips, looking like he smelled something rotten, but slunk after his father.

 

"Would you mind driving, Fox?" Diana handed him the keys to a new Chevy. "I'm afraid to drive in the snow."

 

Glancing in the rear view mirror as he slid behind the wheel, Mulder saw Will doing his swooning heroine impression in the backseat. Mulder mouthed, “Stop it.”

 

"The main roads are clear." Mulder eased the car onto the slippery street. "There's a service station near the house. I'll stop there."

 

"You can't drive me back to the hotel?"

 

Mulder felt a nudge in the small of his back from a William-sized sneaker.

 

"No, I’m sorry. I have date with a four-year-old who can't go to sleep at Grammy's house without her story." He looked back again to see Will, who must have thought his father fell off the turnip truck, giving him a ‘thumbs up’ gesture.

 

"How sweet. I didn't realize you had a little girl, Fox. William, your father talks about you, but I didn't realize you had a sister."

 

"Stepsister," Will piped up. "She will be soon, anyway. Right, Daddy-O?"

 

"As soon as possible," Mulder replied, and made a slow turn onto Columbus Avenue.

 

"I have a son who does the same thing: not going to bed," Diana said. "I hate work taking me away from Gibson, but there isn't a choice."

 

Mulder hadn't known Diana had a child, but wasn’t much talking that weekend, either. She was a model flying up to Boston to work, he booked the same flight to go check on his mother and feel sorry for himself. The Scotch flowed on the airplane and overflowed at her hotel. Of course, they said they would 'get together' once they both got back to New York, which never happened. Instead, a few weeks later, Dana Scully happened.

 

"It's hard," Diana continued sadly. "I know he's fine with my mother when I'm working, but that little face in the window watching me leave..."

 

"How old is he?" Mulder asked. He stopped the car on the snow-covered lot of the closed filling station.

 

"He’s six. He'd love to meet you, Fox. He's a big baseball fan. It would be a thrill, and there haven't been many of those since his father died." 

 

Will was out of the car. The kid held the sandwiches and looked in a hurry to get anywhere else.

 

"You're sure you'll be okay, Diana?" Mulder asked. He watched the heavy snowflakes reflecting in the headlights. "If you have chains, I'll put them on before I leave."

 

"No, go on." She leaned over and kissed his cheek. She slid across the seat and behind the wheel as he got out. "You can't keep your little girl waiting. I'll be fine."

 

"Okay. Let me know where to find Gibson and I'll teach him how to hit a curve ball some afternoon."

 

"He'll be so excited."

 

Mulder held open the driver's door as she put the transmission in gear. He made sure Will couldn't hear him before he said, "Diana- I want to apologize. Dana, my fiancée: she's good for me. I was drinking and I did some things before her I'm not proud of. I'm sorry if you got hurt."

 

She smiled accommodatingly. "I told you: no hard feelings."

 

He nodded. Mulder closed the door and watched as she drove away.

 

From six feet behind him, Will breathed an audible sigh of relief.

 

*~*~*~*

 

"You know," Frohike muttered, sounding like he'd scrambled for the phone in the dark, "I do have office hours, Mulder."

 

"You might be busy if I called you at the office," Mulder responded. He flipped through the book he had confiscated from Will, trying to find the objectionable parts - because a good father needed to know these things. 

 

"Well, I might be busy at eleven-thirty at night, too."

 

"What are the odds?"

 

"Tall, dark, handsome, wealthy, athletic, brilliant, and tongue-tied doesn't do it for every woman, Mulder."

 

"So short, furry, tenacious, paranoid, and shifty does?" Mulder asked. "I'm glad he's willingly reading something, but should the Wonder Boy be in possession of a novel called 'Lolita?'"

 

"Yes. Absolutely. But he shouldn't let his father catch him with it." Frohike yawned. "How did it go talking to your mother about Samantha? Would she tell you anything?"

 

"Well, she told me hello, asked me if I was still playing baseball and married to ‘die Hure,’ and she gave me a list of chores."

 

"Not well, then?"

 

"No. How did it go today?"  

 

"We got nowhere negotiating until Byers presented his witness list, and Phoebe's attorney almost had a stroke. She’s forgotten to mention a few facts I happened to come across. I think Phoebe may come around before the hearing."

 

"You're an evil little troll, Frohike, and I'm grateful to you."

 

"I'm an evil little troll who takes this boy's life personally."       

 

"So do I." Mulder fanned the pages of the book with his thumb. "Thank you. I know this goes above and beyond."

 

"Don't thank me yet. It could go either way if she doesn't back down. If we go to court, it's open season on Fox Mulder."

 

"Still, thanks anyway."  

 

"Go to sleep, Mulder."

 

"Did you find anything new about-"

 

"If I find out anything about Dana Scully, I will call you," Frohike assured him.

 

"You're still looking? You've talked to Agent Dales at the FBI?"

 

"I'm still looking."

 

They had this conversation every night for the past three months. The script never changed.

 

"Agent Dales is paranoid, but he’s the only one still willing to help."

 

"I don't know. Some of what he says makes perfect sense to me, Mulder."

 

"And they let you walk around on the streets?" Mulder said sarcastically. "‘War of the Worlds’ wasn't real, Frohike. It's a radio show and a metaphor for the Russians. And ‘The Creature from the Black Lagoon-’"  

 

"Goodnight, Mulder."

 

"I don't want to find the Gill-man on my payroll."

 

"Goodnight, Mulder."

 

"You know, even Frankenstein’s monster got a bride."

 

"Goodnight, Mulder."

 

"Night."

 

Will, eavesdropping in the next room, appeared in the kitchen to check for news. Finding none, he proceeded to assemble the most elaborate roast beef sandwich in history while he stalled.

 

Mulder opened his mouth to tell Will to go to bed when the phone rang.

 

"My God. Who calls people at midnight?"

 

"You," Will answered. The butter knife clinked repeatedly against the inside of the mayonnaise jar in a way seemingly calculated to annoy his father. "Me. And tall, long-legged, busty brunette pin-ups who can't find their hotel in the snow without a big, strong man to help them, Fox."

 

Mulder made a snorting noise as he reached for the phone.

 

"Hello, Mrs. Scully." Mulder tried to ignore Will doing his hair-flipping, doe-eyed Diana impression. "No, I was awake. Is Emily all right?"

 

As Mrs. Scully spoke, Mulder waved Will away and listened closely.

 

"How is she?"

 

Will stopped his sex-kitten posing against the counter and stood still.

 

"I will be there as soon as possible," Mulder said. He hung up the receiver and sat in stunned silence. His fingers felt numb and his palms damp. Lights, sounds, even his son all seemed oddly distant.

 

"Dad? Is Emily okay?"

 

"They, um, the police found Dana. She was- She was beside the tracks at a railroad switching station.” He stared at the telephone. “She's in a hospital in Washington, D.C. Mrs. Scully is leaving for the hospital."

 

"Where was she? What’s happened?"

 

"They don't know. They don't know what's happened to her," Mulder said shakily. He looked at Will. "She's unconscious. She has a fever. The doctors aren't sure... Mrs. Scully said I should come now. Tonight."

 

"We'll never get a flight out of Boston in this snowstorm."

 

"We aren't.” He took a breath. “I am."    

 

*~*~*~*

 

Someone pulled a plug inside Mulder. He felt his universe bleeding away, drop by drop, second by second. "Nothing?" he asked again, leaning over the counter in case there might be an airplane hidden on the other side.

 

The woman at the airport counter said, "The next flight isn't until morning, and tentative, based on the storm."

 

"It doesn't have to be a direct connection to D.C. Get me out of Boston and I can go from there."

 

"Nothing is taking off or landing in Boston at this time due to the storm," she said tiredly, not grasping the gravity of the situation.

 

"What about a private plane? Can I charter a flight?"

 

"There is nothing taking off or landing-"

 

"I heard you! Find something! I don't care if I'm sitting on a stack of airmail."

 

"There is-"

 

He braced his hand on the counter and took a deep breath. "I am Fox Mulder. I've flown all over the country with the New York Yankees, and I know there's some fool willing to take off for the right price. My fiancée is in a hospital in Washington. Waiting for the eight A.M. flight is not acceptable. You have carte blanche: anything the pilot wants. Find a plane and a pilot, and get me off the ground so I can tell her goodbye before it's too late."

 

The woman's face softened. "I will see what I can do, Mr. Mulder. If you'll wait in the lounge, I will come get you."

 

"Thank you," he said, and turned away.

 

Mulder looked around the bar as he sat down in the empty lounge. He spun his stool restlessly from side to side. So late at night, the room had no bartender. The bottles lining the wall contained various levels of warm, soothing, amber love: the kind that burned going down and was gone by morning.

 

The wrong kind. Not the kind he wanted. Deciding he shouldn’t test his resolve tonight, Mulder moved across the room to the huge glass window. He sank into an overstuffed leather chair and propped his feet up on a low, stylish table. He watched for a while as the snow melted off his shoes and made puddles on the expensive wood, probably leaving water stains. Someone should think to put down heel coasters. His mother would have heel coasters. Dana would have the kind of table that didn't get watermarks.

 

He couldn't breathe in a world without her in it. Dana Scully gave him a place to stand, and without her, he was in free-fall.

 

The clock on the wall marked one, and two. The seconds echoed in the empty, over-decorated room. Mulder flipped through a few magazines. He tried Will's "Lolita" novel until the words started to blur. He was hemorrhaging; he felt certain of it. He needed a nurse.

 

Mulder stared out at the blowing snow as he waited and, as the clock edged toward three, rested his elbows on his knees, covered his face with his hands, and cried.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder squatted down and stroked Emily’s hair as she dozed amid a patchwork of winter coats on the waiting room sofa. "Hello there, little one."

 

Emily opened her eyes. "Mulder," she said, sitting up. She wrapped her arms around his neck and nuzzled against his five o'clock shadow. "You're scratchy."

 

"Yes, I'm scratchy, honey." Mulder put one arm around her and closed his stinging eyes. "Where's Grammy?"

 

"With Mommy and Uncle Bill." As if remembering her news, she said, "Mommy's back, Mulder. She's very sick, but the doctors are trying to help her."

 

He nodded. Emily fished through scarves and gloves for the Yankees’ cap. She put it on before she lay back down. He draped his trench coat over Emily. She held the stuffed Kitty, now missing an eye and part of an ear, clutched tight.

 

The hallway stretched infinitely long as he walked. Each room was a held breath, a skipped heartbeat, and another name not 'Scully.' His shoes echoed obscenely quickly on the polished floor, the inevitable Truth with a capital 'T' rushing at him much faster than he could manage it. He wanted to snatch it back and have time slow into a lazy Saturday afternoon: to have one more sci-fi matinee with Emily holding the popcorn and dozing in the seat between them, or to sit silently with Dana in Central Park and watch the snow cocoon the city.

 

"Fox Mulder." Bill Scully stepped out of a hospital room and closed the door behind him. "What are you doing here?"  

 

"Your mother called me last night. How is-" 

 

"Mom made a mistake, Mr. Mulder," Bill said coldly. "Obviously, so did Dana."

 

Mulder started to go around him, but Bill moved with him as though they were dancing, blocking his path. A pair of policemen down the hall started walking toward them.

 

"Look, my sister's nothing special to you, but she is to us. You've had your fun. I'm asking you nicely: leave her alone."

 

"I don't understand. She's very special to me."

 

"I'm sure." Bill folded his arms and looked away. "Mr. Mulder, the doctor said Dana's recently been, uh, she's been with child. The hospital didn't tell Mom last night, so Mom didn't know when she called you."

 

Mulder blinked. An orange numbness formed at the crown of his head and spread through his body until his fingertips tingled.  

 

Faltering, Bill continued, "They're saying Dana didn't lose the baby, that, uh, someone has... She's had an abortion, something went wrong, and she was left to die. The police have arrived. When she wakes up, if she wakes up..." He looked away again.

 

Mulder stood in the middle of the hall shaking his head from side to side. This was not real; this was not happening. There was a mistake. "Why would she do that?"

 

"You tell me." Bill addressed the floor as he said angrily, "Dana called Mom in January, saying she was getting married. A nice man with a teenage son. 'Used to play baseball,' she said. I've seen the tabloids. My sister's a nice girl, and she thought you would marry her. Finding a decent doctor would be pocket change to a man like you. How could you let her do that? How could you let my mother wait and worry all this time? Mom thought someone kidnapped her."

 

"I didn't know-"

 

"Bullshit you didn't know! You knew you were fucking her, and the doctor says she was at least five or six months along. You knew when Dana took off in January." 

 

"No, I didn't. She shouldn't b-be- We'd, um-" It took Mulder several seconds to put all the pieces together. "The baby wasn't mine."

 

Bill looked up. He jammed his hands in his pants pockets and met Mulder’s gaze. "Of course it wasn't. It never is. You're free to go, Mr. Mulder. Just walk away. Thank you for all you've done for my sister," he added sarcastically.

 

This was not real, this was not real, this was not happening. He'd fallen asleep on the plane and this was a nightmare.

 

"I-I want to see her," Mulder stammered. "I want to talk to her doctor. I want to know what happened."

 

"You can leave or I can kick your ass myself, you selfish, lying son-of-a-bitch," Bill hissed. "How dare you! She's my baby sister, you bastard. Make a move, because I'd love to have a reason."

 

Bill Scully was ten years younger and forty pounds heavier.

 

The policemen stood ten feet away.

 

Mulder made a move.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Not surprisingly, Frohike had a rule number nineteen: Don't expect your agent to use his money to post your bail.

 

"Or to pay your bar tab, marker, doctor, lawyer, drug dealer, hotel bill, or working girl," his agent had clarified over the telephone. "Any pornography I have to pay for becomes part of the Melvin Frohike Private Library. And if you try to go back to the hospital, Mulder, I told the chief of police to lock you up again and leave you there. There's no press. Keep your head down, your mouth shut, and get in the car. I'll meet you in a few hours."

 

Mulder sat in the back seat and stared out the window as the silent limousine glided north. It was morning again, but the tinted windows made the winter sun even fainter, like some of the life drained from the world. Mulder’s knuckles looked like he'd punched a cheese grater, and he had marks on his wrists from the handcuffs. The car passed through a tunnel and he saw his reflection in the window. His eye and cheekbone looked as bruised and swollen as they felt.

 

North of Baltimore, the limo driver said, "I'm to tell you her fever's down, sir. She was awake earlier. She'll live."

 

Mulder nodded at the window.

 

"Your son is on an afternoon flight out of Boston."

 

Mulder waited for the chauffeur to say something else, but the young man didn't. The naked tree limbs blurred past, the tires hummed against the wet highway, and his head throbbed. The limousine's wet bar was stocked with juice and ice, but no liquor. His handlers had added a bottle of Aspirin, but Mulder decided he'd rather hurt.

 

He still waited to wake up from the nightmare.

 

Five hours later, the limo stopped in the empty, snow-covered parking lot of the Amtrak train station in Newark, beside Frohike's old red pickup truck. His agent kept a driver and a showroom-condition town car for business, but in private, Frohike drove the same Ford truck the whole time Mulder had known him. That meant a personal errand, not a business one.

 

"You look like Death warmed over," was how Melvin Frohike greeted him. Frohike handed Mulder a strawberry milkshake and opened the passenger-side door of the truck. "Get in. It's freezing."

 

Mulder got in the beat-up truck stiffly. He leaned his head back against the top of the seat and put the cold paper cup to his jaw.

 

"If you won the fight, I'd hate to see the other guy," Frohike said as he started the engine. "Those are the only charges I haven't been able to get dropped yet. Her brother doesn't know the phrase 'quid pro quo,' but he had several colorful names for you. He's a sailor, I gather."

 

Mulder closed his eyes and focused on not crying.

 

"I don't know," Frohike said, answering the question Mulder didn't have the energy to ask. "I don't know about the baby and I don't know what happened to her. But I'll figure it out," he assured him.

 

*~*~*~*

 

"No. Absolutely not, Mulder. This is a horribly bad idea." Frohike put his hand over the living room telephone so Mulder couldn't pick up the receiver. "It doesn't add up to me, either, but you are not calling her."

 

"You put the call through and let me talk to her."

 

"Custody hearing. Assault charges. I told you: let me handle it."

 

"Dial," Mulder ordered, He perched on the edge of his sofa at The Plaza and chewing the skin off his lower lip. Room service brought up an ice pack, but he held it rather than kept it on his face. "Will's flight lands in an hour."

 

"If Phoebe's attorney or the press gets wind of this, you won't stand a chance in court. You're going to throw your career away and give John Byers a heart attack."

 

"Dial," Mulder repeated. "If she's awake, I want to talk to her. If not, get her doctor on the phone."

 

"Has this telephone rang? Has she left messages for you downstairs?" Frohike asked and answered, "No. She doesn't want to talk to you, Mulder."

 

Mulder pointed at the telephone.

 

"You will lose Will if anyone finds out," Frohike argued. "You've done what you can. I'll make sure she's okay, but you can't be involved. Let me do my job. Maybe there's some explanation - and I hope there is - but we go with what we know. You need to walk away and pretend it never happened, pretend you never met her. You are sorry for her misfortune, but you have your son to think about. If she would call you, I want you to politely hang up."

 

Mulder shook his head. He pointed at the phone.

 

"No."

 

"There's a telephone in my bedroom too, and a whole row of telephones in the lobby. What are you going to do? Stand guard? Ban me from Ma Bell? Do you want to fight about it? Dial, Melvin."

 

"This isn't a game."

 

"No, it's my life," Mulder shot back angrily. "She's my fiancée and she's in a hospital bed and I want some answers. I want to know what happened."

 

"Jesus Christ," Frohike said slowly. "Do you still think you're marrying her? What are you thinking? Are you thinking?"

 

Mulder stared stupidly at his agent before he admitted, "I don't know."

 

"You are such a brilliant, good-hearted man. I know you love her, but do you have to get your nose rubbed in it before you learn?"

 

"Either you dial, or I dial."

 

Frohike muttered but he dialed the telephone.

 

Mulder held his breath as Frohike bluffed his way expertly through the hospital's front desk, through the nurses' station, and to Dana Scully's bedside. Frohike waited a beat and handed Mulder the telephone.

 

"Mr. Marty Martin," Dana's tired voice said, "That's a lousy alias."     

 

"I'm not very creative. God, it's nice to hear your voice." Mulder stabbed the rug with the toe of his shoe. It soothed him to know for certain she was alive. He chose the optimistic "Do you feel like talking?" over the more appropriate 'do you want to talk?'

 

"I want to apologize," she answered quietly. "Mom said you and Bill got into a fight."

 

"We had a gentlemanly difference of opinions. It included an unfortunate encounter with the local authorities."

 

"Mom said you've been taking care of Emily."

 

"Yes." Mulder found a loose piece of skin on the inside of his lower lip and set about slicing it away with his teeth.

 

"I'm betting you're behind the police dropping the charges against me." 

 

His agent, hovering close enough to hear, gestured like he was having a seizure while being attacked by bees.

 

Mulder put the ice pack on his jaw and said, "My handler is advising me not to comment. Or he wants me to steal second base. Or bunt. It's hard to tell."

 

"Thank you."

 

"I missed you, Dana. I still miss you. Whatever happened, I'm glad you're okay. Are you- um- When do you get to go home?"

 

"In a few days. I'm going to spend some time with Mom in D.C. until I'm up to chasing Emily again."

 

"You could come-"

 

"No," she said quickly. "No, I can't."

 

He swallowed but the lump in his throat wouldn’t go down. He tilted his chin upward with the effort. "Okay."

 

"I'm sorry. Mulder, I am."

 

"So am I. Dana, I don't understand-" 

 

"I have to go."

 

"May I call you?" he asked, and found himself talking to a disconnected phone line.

 

After listening for a moment, Mulder handed it back to Frohike, who set the receiver back on the cradle without comment. Mulder moved the damp ice pack to his eye and, wrapping an arm across his sore ribs, sat back carefully on the sofa. He couldn't tell if his heartache radiated out or the bruises grew roots, but he hurt. He needed a nurse.

 

"Take care of her hospital bill," he told Frohike from under the ice pack.

 

"Are you suicidal?" his agent's voice said in disbelief. "Bent on self-destruction?"

 

"Anonymously," Mulder conceded tiredly.

 

*~*~*~*

 

"I thought you were room service," Mulder muttered as he walked back to the living room in his sock feet. He’d gotten a haircut two days ago, but his grey flannel shirt was on its third or fourth wearing. Mulder left his agent standing in the foyer.

 

"You're looking better,” Frohike called. “That's good."

 

"How is that good?" Mulder turned up the volume of the game show on television before he flopped down on the sofa. "Who cares how I look?"

 

Frohike invited himself in. "You're not drunk. You're not picking up women in the bar downstairs. You're not standing at home plate in Yankee Stadium making that poor old Colored groundskeeper work the pitching machine in the rain."

 

"It's still early, Will's still here, and it's not raining." Mulder helped the contestant on television by suggesting, "Belgium."

 

“Belgium,” the TV host announced.

 

Mulder nodded in approval. "What do you want, Frohike?"

 

Frohike set his briefcase on the coffee table and snapped the locks open. "To show you something. You know, Agent Dales in the FBI says this game show is rigged."

 

Mulder scratched the stubble on his jaw. "Agent Dales in the FBI also thinks space aliens are among us."

 

There was another knock at the front door. Will's door opened, revealing a bedroom that looked like a tornado blew through it. The Plaza maids took pride in their hotel, and his son took pride in horrifying the maids at the moment. Will waded through the dirty laundry and stacks of records, looking morose. The room service waiter left a tray and made a hasty retreat.

 

"Don't take that to your room. We have a table," Mulder ordered from the sofa. "We aren't animals-"

 

William complied by taking the tray to his bedroom and slamming the door behind him.

 

"Cute kid," Frohike commented, sorting through his files.

 

"He's a peach. Handel," Mulder informed the television, and frowned when the contestant guessed, ‘Bach.’

 

“Mulder, what did you tell Will about Dana?"

 

"She's back, she was sick but she'll be okay, and we won't be seeing each other anymore. And he needs to go back to his mother's apartment tomorrow morning or else I go to jail."

 

"How's the wonder boy taking it?"

 

In answer to Frohike's question, Will reappeared. The boy held his plate in front of him as though it held roaches instead of an uneaten sandwich. Making sure his father watched, he carried the plate to the kitchen and loudly dumped the sandwich – china plate included - into the trashcan.

 

"What's wrong, William?" Mulder asked. Will would eat anything as long as he could add some combination of pickles, mayonnaise, vinegar, and ketchup to it. "It's one of the best restaurants in the city. How was that not up to your standards?"

 

"That's not how Miss Scully makes grilled cheese sandwiches.” Will added, “Hello, Frohike."

 

"Do you want something else?"

 

"Yes. I want to ring Brooklyn and tell Miss Scully I'd like a grilled cheese sandwich. Real cheese; not the fake stuff you have lying about. Sober up, shower, and see to it, Daddy-O.”

 

“It is not your business, Will,” Mulder shot back. “Get the plate out of the garbage.”

 

“It is my life, Father.” The boy made no move toward the discarded plate. “Which you have ruined. Goodbye, Frohike." Will stalked to his room, slammed his bedroom door again, and turned his Hi-Fi up full blast.

 

"Any questions?” Mulder asked Frohike. “This has been a good week; he was only expelled for two out of the five school days. Those discipline slips are like green stamps: one more expulsion and he can trade them in for a new school."

 

Mulder got up from the sofa. Cursing, he fished the china plate out of the kitchen waste bin to nick his index finger and find the plate in three expensive pieces. Mulder dropped the shards back into the trash. He opened Will's door, said something sharp, and the volume of the record player decreased.

 

Returning, Mulder nodded to Frohike’s file. "What did you interrupt your Saturday to show me?"

 

"Dana Scully's medical records."

 

"Frohike, I told you to leave it alone. It's been a month. She's won't talk to me, she won't see me. Trust me, I’ve-”

 

Frohike interrupted. “Tell me you haven’t tried.”

 

Mulder looked at the old man steadily. “Whatever happened, it's over."

 

"Phosphorated hesperidin," Frohike announced.

 

"Gesundheit."

 

"A synthetic combination of estrogen and progesterone. It's a contraceptive still in the experimental stage. It showed up in her blood, along with a dozen other bizarre substances. That's why the doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong, and why she was so much sicker than she should have been, even with the infection. She'd been given something convincing her body it was super-pregnant."

 

"A contraceptive?" Mulder echoed skeptically. He examined the cut on his finger. It hurt, but no blood welled up.

 

"Birth control. 'Put it on before you put it in.' Didn't the Army show you those VD films?" Frohike asked. "Same idea, but in chemical form. Anyway, it should never have been in her bloodstream. Not in those extreme levels. Did you know she wasn't necessarily five or six months along? The doctors guessed by the size of the uterus. She could have been carrying more than one baby. Twins."

 

Mulder thought for a few seconds. "Okay. Are the doctors sure she, um, about the, um... She didn't miscarry? Women miscarry," he added, allowing a little flicker of hope to ignite. “It happens all the time.”

 

"She didn't miscarry, but that's another interesting tidbit. The doctor said she had an abortion, but what he means is the babies were removed carefully, like they were delivered rather than miscarried."

 

"Why won't she talk to me?" Mulder ran his fingers through his hair and scooted to the edge of the sofa. "What are you telling me?"

 

"She was kidnapped, which you believe, and she was carrying your children, which you've said was possible. I'm saying someone gave her drugs that did God-knows-what to her body and to the babies, and surgically removed the fetuses. Once they had what they wanted, they left her to die, except she didn't. She survived and got away. So, they're threatening her: with Emily, with her family, even with you. It's like before. Dana kept Emily, but she paid a price. Now, they'll let her live, but she can't see you."

 

"Say that's true - which is saying a lot - who are 'they?' Who would know she was expecting before she did? Who would want aborted babies? Those evil aliens in Roswell? Were there mind control rays? UFO's? Don't forget those super-humans they're breeding. This isn't some secret government plot for you and Langly to speculate on; this is my life. Was my life. I think you're reaching, Frohike."

 

"I think you're afraid to look any further. I met this woman. She's isn't Phoebe, Mulder. Aborting your baby isn't even on her radar."

 

Mulder watched him for a few seconds. He leaned back, propped his feet back up on the coffee table, and crossed his arms. "Not my baby.”

 

"Who are you taking about?"

 

"Joe Lewis." Mulder stared at the television and the new game show contestant. He balled his hands into fists. The little cut on his finger smarted. He pressed his thumb against it so it smarted more. Still, it didn’t bleed.

 

"Come on, Mulder."

 

"A boxer who started fighting in 1937? It's Joe Lewis."

 

Frohike sighed and closed his briefcase. He stood, and picked up his coat and hat. "I'm not dropping this. There's something here, and I'm going to figure out what it is."

 

"The Dutch West India Company," Mulder responded, answering the $64,000 question.

 

"If they send you a check, I get five percent," Frohike reminded him, and closed the door behind him as he left.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder knew it was a dream but he didn't care. In his dream, it was still perfect.

 

Maybe a man got one great love affair per lifetime. Mulder thought their love could outlast death, but for this round, this was all he got. Maybe love got doled out like bowls of soup, one per man. If those few winter months with Dana were his ration, he wanted one more moment of it, damn it. Mulder wanted to collect the shards and clutch them to his chest, ignoring the stabbing pain.

 

The evening had been cold but not yet frigid; lazy snowflakes drifted down and sparkled silver in the streetlamps. Christmas would come in a few weeks, and velvet bows and balsam wreaths and mistletoe decorated the shops. People carried Christmas trees and packages home. Around Mulder and Dana, the city hummed with preparation and anticipation, but they were quiet together, strangely comfortable for two people who'd known each other six weeks. In his dream, Mulder saw her hair - a dark, beautiful auburn with strands of copper and gold. He saw the pink of her lips and cheeks, and the hints of violet in her blue eyes. She was the color of treasure.

 

They'd never made love. Never been past a goodnight kiss, in fact. She was wary of letting him into her life; he felt it sometimes. He liked the dichotomy of Dana Scully. Her rational mind liked a safe bet but got overruled by the passion in her heart. He compared himself to Emily's stray cat; Dana fussed about him, but she let him in every time he showed up. Actions spoke louder than words.

 

Mulder had no doubt he loved her. He thought she loved him.

 

"Which one is yours?" Dana asked as they walked back down Fifth Avenue, hand in hand. They’d dressed for the theater. Mulder asked if her feet hurt in those high heels, but she'd assured him she was fine.

 

Mulder pointed to the corner of The Plaza, the lights of the upper floors still visible through the snow. He'd been in her apartment a few times during the day but she'd never been in his. She had a daughter who lived with her, and they could leave Dana’s apartment door open. Mulder’s floor was private; he could meet her in the lobby but he couldn't invite a nice girl up. "Tenth floor. Can you see the turret and the terrace?"

 

"I've watched you eat blueberry pancakes with circus dwarfs. An apartment at The Plaza doesn't fit you, Mulder."

 

"It's an investment and it's close to Will's mother's apartment. I wasn't there much until this fall," he explained, and added, "Will was in his castles and wizards stage, and he liked the turret. My barber's in the basement. Plus, there's a secret tunnel and a ghostly presence reported in the subbasement."

 

"Now that fits," she said. "Have you seen either?"

 

"I've seen the tunnel. It's how they used to smuggle in alcohol during Prohibition. My investigation of The Plaza subbasement ghost is ongoing."

 

The fluttery skirt of Dana's black silk evening dress peeked from beneath her winter coat and swayed as she walked beside him. Her cheeks were crimson in the cold, her breath white, and her gloved palm felt warm against his. They'd left his car with The Plaza's valet and gone for a stroll before dinner, and decided on continuing their walk rather than having dinner. They ambled in and out of the stores along Fifth Avenue, stopping at FAO Schwartz to shop for Will and Emily. The larger packages he had sent across the street to The Plaza's front desk, but Mulder carried a shopping bag in one hand. Now they neared missing the show, but it didn't matter. There were no photographers or reporters or fans - just the two of them on a beautiful, snowy December night, doing normal things and lost in the crowd - and it was perfect.

 

"Do you want to hear a good ghost story?" Mulder asked.

 

"If I said 'no,' would it dissuade you?"

 

"Probably not," he answered honestly.

 

"Go ahead."

 

"President Lincoln's funeral procession went down Fifth Avenue April 25, 1865," he told her as they crossed 58th Street. "Right past where we are now. The train bought his body from Philadelphia to New York, and the casket was transferred to a black hearse for the procession to city hall. After the public viewing, that afternoon, the procession looped through the city again, down Fifth Avenue and over to the Hudson River Railway Depot where he got reloaded onto the funeral train to go to Albany." He stopped walking and grinned at her, swinging the FAO Schwartz bag back and forth playfully. "There's a legend that Lincoln's funeral train still leaves the station. Every April 25th, at dusk, a ghostly black train draped in crepe leaves New York and runs along the Hudson River to Albany, forever bearing the slain president's body home."

 

Dana gave him a skeptical look and took the shopping bag. "Where does the train go once it reaches Albany?"

 

He shrugged. "I don't know."

 

"Lincoln is buried in Springfield, Illinois, not Albany, New York. Does another ghost train take over for the rest of the way, or does his body travel back and forth in Hudson Valley Railroad purgatory?"

 

"Details," he said dismissively, and started walking again. "We could check it out. April 25th. We could stake out the station and see for ourselves. Provided the funeral train leaves New York this year, next year we stake out the Albany station, see where it goes from there."

 

She studied him, her eyes full of promises. No doubt. He loved her and, beneath her calm, rational surface, he knew she loved him whether she wanted to or not.

 

Maybe love was more ethereal than he'd thought. Less durable. Maybe she changed her mind. Or he was wrong.

 

"Is it a date?" he asked.

 

"April 25th is months away."

 

"Do you have something better planned for that Sunday?"

 

"You mean something better than standing outside a train station at night, waiting for a figment of someone's overactive imagination?"

 

"Well, yes."

 

"No," she admitted.

 

"Keep the date in mind, Nurse Scully."

 

She smiled. He kissed her, and her lips felt warm and soft. Even in the chaste kiss, he sensed the draw of her, the passion kindling. She was fire and he edged dangerously close.

 

He felt an odd sensation in the base of his brain, and looked past Dana to see the same man who had interrupted their dinner in The Oak Room a few weeks ago. The old man stared at them from across the street as he smoked a cigarette. Something about the man was unsettling. Dana was right; he looked at them as if they were merchandise and he was a buyer appraising them. Dana turned. The smoking man tipped his hat as if he knew her.

 

Mulder sighed. The last thing he wanted was that creepy old man intruding into their evening again.

 

"We need cookies." Mulder stepped toward the entrance of Bergdorf Goodman, pulling Dana with him. "I know a secret. Are you interested in a covert pastry mission, Nurse Scully?"

 

Dana looked at him quizzically, and at the old man who still watched them from behind a cloud of cigarette smoke. Bergdorf Goodman sold the most stylish - and the most expensive - women's ready-to-wear fashions in New York. "If I said 'no,' would it dissuade you?"

 

"My son's nanny once told him they have the best cookies in the city in the ladies' dressing room here. Being the less-fair sex, we've been unable to confirm this." Mulder gave her a clean handkerchief. "Only you can help us. Smuggle some out if possible, but at least try something on, sample, and report back."

 

"The dresses in this store cost more than my apartment," she protested.

 

"You don't have to buy anything. Just get to the ladies dressing room. I'd do it, but they don't have any gowns in a forty or forty-two long."

 

"Can't we ask them?"

 

"Where's the fun in that?" he responded.

 

A uniformed Colored man smiled and held open the door. As soon as they stepped into the warm lobby, two pretty, well-dressed salesgirls approached.

 

"You're serious?" Dana asked Mulder under her breath. "You want me to pilfer cookies from Bergdorf Goodman?"

 

"Or, we could go outside and listen to Smokey critique my career." A nearby mannequin displayed a low-cut, blue satin dress with a tiny waist and an enormous skirt. Mulder tilted his head not-so-subtly toward it a few times.

 

She sighed, gave her coat to a salesgirl, the shopping bag to Mulder, and, tilting her chin up, graciously asked about the blue dress. As Dana vanished into the back of the store, a second salesgirl took Mulder's coat and hat and the bag, and escorted him to a sofa area near the front door. She asked if she could bring him anything. He asked for a pen and paper.

 

As he wrote, the first salesgirl reappeared and took the blue dress off of the mannequin. "We need the size six," she told the other clerk. "Would you bring the new gold Dior as well, and the long cream satin one? And the cream and copper Balenciaga? Also the dark blue silk, I think."

 

The blue satin dress on the mannequin got replaced with a pink taffeta monstrosity, and an armload of dresses was collected from the showroom floor and carried out of sight. Outside, across the street, the smoking man was nowhere to be seen.

 

The salesgirl returned, and Mulder handed her a sheet of paper with Dana's address on it. "If she likes any of the dresses, don't tell her, but bill me and send them to this address. Don't let her return them, either." He gave the woman a second sheet of stationery, this one folded closed. "This goes in the box with the dresses."

 

Fifteen minutes later, with Dana still absent, the first salesgirl gestured to him from across the room. She silently held up three fingers. Mulder nodded and hoped she meant three dresses, not three grand.

 

Twenty minutes later, Dana appeared in the same black evening dress she wore into the store. He’d taken her on several formal dates; Dana wore the same black dress.

 

The salesgirl brought their coats.

 

"Nothing you liked, honey?" He stood up. "After all those dresses? You tried on half the store."

 

"I'm sorry," Dana said casually.

 

He looked for some package but she was empty-handed. "The Plaza has a New Year’s Eve Party. Keep looking; I can wait."

 

"I'll wear what I have. Where is the bag with Emily's tea set?"

 

"I got tired of carrying it. They'll send it to your apartment on Monday."

 

"Okay," Dana looked like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. "Let's go to dinner."

 

Once they bundled up, Mulder escorted her outside and across the street to The Plaza. Instead of going inside though, she continued walking up Fifth Avenue. She crossed 59th street with her high heels clicking purposefully, and reached the cobblestones along the southern edge of Central Park.

 

He grinned, sure she was up to something.

 

"Keep walking, big guy," she advised him quietly and calmly. "I'm not going to jail for stealing cookies. You're never to mention a word of this to my daughter."

 

A hundred feet inside the park, the sounds of the city started to fade, and the smoking man was long forgotten. The snow-covered trees were wrapped in lights, with scarlet ribbons around their trunks, like the entire city night was a gift. Few people visited the park so late in the evening and they seemed to step from the bustling streets into a private, magical world.

 

Dana bit her lower lip as if trying not to smile, and undid the clasp of her velvet purse. Inside a purse no bigger than his fist, she’d secreted a dozen dainty pink cookies. He'd thought the cookies mint green but, in his dream, they were pink.

 

"Wow," he said, reaching for one.

 

Dana held up one finger, wanting him to wait.

 

She turned away, unbuttoned the top of her winter coat and, apparently forgetting he stood tall enough to see over her shoulder, reached down the front of her evening dress and extracted a little bundle wrapped in his handkerchief. She turned to him, folding back the fabric to show him a collection of cream-colored cookies, their tops decorated with blue sugar crystals. Her eyes sparkled with mischief.

 

"I didn't expect there to be two kinds. Thank goodness there weren't three."

 

"Thank goodness," he echoed softly. "Where is your lipstick, compact, mad money, and apartment key?"

 

"My mother would die if I told you."

 

He licked his lips and kissed her long and deep. He put his free hand on the back of her head, pulling her closer and forgetting the rest of the world for a time. Eventually, he heard footsteps, opened his eyes, and they parted. Her lips looked redder and her breath white.

 

I love you, he thought, wanting to tell her. Now and forever, for better or for worse, as certain as the laws of physics.

 

"Did you eat some cookies already?" He tasted vanilla and sugar in his mouth. "I thought this was a joint mission."

 

"I palmed more than would fit in my cleavage. It's not an exact science, Mulder," she insisted as he laughed.

 

"Let me see." He pulled back the collar of her winter coat about two inches, barely enough to see her neck. "How many diamonds do you think you could fit in there, Artful Dodger? The market is down, I can't convince Will he isn't getting a car for Christmas, and Tiffany's is still open."

 

"I'm on a covert pastry mission, not a crime spree."

 

He kissed her again, lightly, wiped an inch of snow off a wooden park bench, and invited her to sit down. Will's nanny had been right; the cookies were excellent. Once Dana had a few of each kind left, he folded them in his handkerchief and tucked them in his pocket.

 

"For William?" she asked.

 

He nodded. "Would you like to meet him?" He took her hand as they sat and watched the snow fall on the dark, silent park.

 

"I would," she said after a few seconds. "Would you like William to meet Emily?"

 

"I would."

 

He proposed and she accepted. The intent was there, if not the words. He couldn't date her and not become acquainted with a four-year-old. To Emily, Mulder was a nice friend of Mommy's; to Will, things wouldn't be that simple. If they involved his son, they committed for the long term.

 

"You're going to watch for Lincoln's funeral train with me, aren't you?"

 

"I am," she said, and Mulder believed her. The snow drifted down, covering the world in a soft white blanket. They'd missed their dinner reservation, missed "South Pacific," and he didn't care.

 

"Are you still hungry?"

 

"No," Dana answered.

 

"Cold?"

 

"Not one bit," she said with her warm hand in his. They sat together, watching the snow fall for a long time, letting the world revolve around them. It was magical - the two of them. All of Gotham was their playground. On other nights, they went dancing and to parties and fancy restaurants. That December night though, all she wanted was to be with him. All he wanted was to be with her, and they must have sat in Central Park for half an hour.

 

Afterward, they both had to report for parent duty. Mulder kissed her goodnight a second, then a third time, not eager to go back out in the cold or home alone. If he hadn't needed to pick up Will and his friends at the movies, Mulder might have asked her if he could stay. He suspected, if he'd asked, she might have let him. If he stayed - made love to her that night - he wouldn't have regretted it.

 

He didn’t stand dangerously close to the flames. He was engulfed.

 

Back at The Plaza, late that night, as Will and his friends slept and the snow fell, Mulder went out on his terrace. He looked down at the white night and yellow lamp lights glowing in Central Park, and he made a decision. He’d have his grandmother’s engagement ring resized. Ask Dana at Christmas. If she said yes, they’d be married by spring.

 

The sound of a ringing telephone intruded into his dream: his wake-up call from the front desk. Mulder woke alone, nude. His temples pounded. He opened his eyes to two empty old-fashioned glasses on the nightstand beside a bottle of Scotch - empty - and a prophylactic - still in the foil wrapper. Dana's dainty cross necklace still hung around his neck.

 

Will was gone. Mulder's head hurt, and he had to think to remember what day it was. Sunday, April 25th, he realized, and closed his eyes again.

 

The art of staying sane lay in the balance between holding on to the past and letting go of it. He needed to let go of her before he went crazy or put a gun to his head. He needed to buy a new bed, sell this goddamned gilded apartment. Get out of the city. Get up, sober up, and get on with his life.

 

Maybe it hadn't been perfect, Mulder tried to tell himself. Maybe it hadn't even been close. It hadn't even been true, he thought.

 

But it had been: all of those things. His heart and soul knew it, even if his brain couldn't accept it. Dana Scully had been his one great love. Mulder was thirty-nine years old, and he wouldn’t get another. The telephone kept ringing, insisting he had some reason to get out of bed. Eventually, Mulder stumbled to the bathroom and stood under the scalding shower as if he could wash memories and sin away.

 

Maybe it wasn't the length of love, but the depth, he told himself. The truest love burned the hottest. Maybe he'd get another chance in some other lifetime. Maybe a man should only hope to end up with the right regrets.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder’s father claimed some things looked better in a catalog than in real life. Later, the advice had been 'Nachts sind alle Katzen grau:' all cats are gray in the dark. That had been his father's opinion of women; in bed, one was a good as another.

 

Mulder sat, fiddled with the baseball, and wondered what in the hell he was doing there. Objectively, he watched little Gibson feed bread crusts to the eager ducks while Diana went to "freshen up." This was someone's life, and it didn't look bad in the pictures: a nice Sunday afternoon picnic in Central Park with a beautiful woman and her eerily silent son. It seemed a perfectly acceptable life that didn't feel like his. 

 

Life went on, Mulder told himself, looking for comfort in clichés and trying to fill up space in his head. He continued drawing breath after Dana Scully. It was, excepting Will, like storing a single leftover pea in a one-gallon Tupperware container: a vast waste of space. That was it, Mulder decided, waxing philosophical; he constituted a mostly-empty, over-sized waste of space in the rusting, tepid Frigidaire of life.

 

He hated himself.

 

He watched Diana sauntering back from the public restroom, flashing her thousand-watt smile at him.

 

He hated himself.

 

He picked up his glass so he could hate himself more. Her picnic basket included three deli sandwiches, a blanket, a grape Nehi for Gibson, a bottle of Mulder’s favorite Scotch in a paper bag, and two glasses. Mulder brought a bat, a few balls, and two gloves from his apartment, all unused so far that day. He decided this morning he wasn't drinking anymore, but by noon the Scotch bottle once again took one for the team.

 

"There isn't any more, honey," Diana told Gibson when the boy ran back to get more bread. "Did you want your sandwich, Fox?"

 

"No, the ducks can have it."

 

Gibson looked at the two of them curiously from behind his glasses, and turned away without comment to hurry back to the pond. Mulder supposed meeting the big baseball man wasn't nearly as fascinating as feeding the ducks.

 

"Is it Miss or Missus?" Mulder asked as Diana sat down on the blanket beside him. She smoothed her skirt underneath her shapely legs and looked Life-magazine-perfect.

 

"Hum?" She leaned back, bracing herself on her hands and tilting her face toward the sun.

 

"I'm curious, Diana. You told Will to call you 'Miss' this winter, but you talked about being a widow."

 

Diana blinked, hesitating. "It's easier to get work to use my maiden name and not mention ever being married. My husband died in Korea. Gibson was a baby, and I had to go back to work."      

 

"No one ever questions you and your son having different last names?"

 

"I don't exactly bring it up."

 

He took another drink. "You were never married, were you?"

 

"We were engaged." She turned to study Mulder, and continued quietly, "Look, I know you had a bad experience. I know what happened with Dana Scully. I can't imagine being betrayed like that. We all have our secrets. You know I'm not an angel. I like to have a good time. I don't spend as much time with Gibson as I'd like, but my mother takes good care of him. Beyond that, I'm as boring as I say I am."

 

"Me too," Mulder answered casually. He found her face so close he smelled the traces of soap and makeup on her skin. "I'm even less interesting than a duck."

 

She smiled invitingly.

 

Mulder cleared his throat and moved away. "Where did Gibson go?"

 

"Are you okay, Fox?"

 

He nodded, basing that judgment on some outlandishly liberal definition of 'okay.' "I'll go see where Gibson went. He must have wandered off."

 

"I'm sure he's fine," Diana answered, which struck Mulder as an odd answer for a parent to give. Dana would never have let Emily out of her-

 

He quashed that thought, stamping it out before it spread. Mulder took a deep breath and tried to think simple, sober thoughts as he searched for Gibson.

 

After a few minutes, he spotted the boy near the empty ice skating rink, waiting his turn at the water fountain. For an instant, Mulder thought he saw Dana and Emily in front of Gibson in line. Mulder saw Dana everywhere these days, to torment himself. She was the pretty face in the crowd, the petite woman in the distance, and the voice at the edge of his dreams, out of reach.

 

He blinked, but they lingered, looking deliciously imperfect with Dana's wind-blown hair and grass stains on the knees of Em's denim overalls. Emily couldn't reach the fountain, so Dana boosted her up, balancing Em on her thigh and reaching across her awkwardly to help hold the button down. Water arced fitfully, and Emily chased it up and down with eager lips. It was a snapshot out of any happy family album, lacking only Norman Rockwell's signature in the lower right hand corner. 

 

Mulder saw Emily spot him as Dana put her down. Emily smiled and wiped her dripping mouth on her sleeve. While her mother tried her turn at mastering the hydraulics of the fountain, Emily ran to Mulder. She leapt into his arms in a frenzy of worn, butter-soft denim and sun-warmed little girl scents. She was real. He could feel her and smell her and his tired heart missed a beat as he hugged her to him.

 

Dana looked around, calling for her daughter. Mulder watched her start toward them but stop. Her mouth still open, lips damp, Dana stared at him as though she didn’t know if he was real, either. Perhaps she saw him everywhere, too.

 

“Mulder?” she mouthed, looking like she might cry.

 

Einstein was wrong. Time paused, and the world became a single precious soap bubble moment Mulder could hold in his hand.   

 

"I-I found something of yours." Mulder let Emily slide down as he stared at Dana. Dana's face and hips seemed rounder - because she'd been pregnant not so long ago, he realized. An elastic bandage covered her right wrist and hand. She tugged her sleeve down over it.

 

"Thank you." Dana pulled Emily in front of her and put her left hand protectively on her daughter's shoulder. "I'm sorry she bothered you."

 

"No bother," Mulder heard his voice say, amazed at how steady it sounded. "How are you?"

 

"I'm fine," she answered, admirably keeping up her end of the inane conversation. "We're fine."

 

"What happened to your hand?"

 

"A hairline radial fracture. The doctor thinks I fell and tried to catch myself."

 

Mulder nodded stupidly. "You don't know what happened?"

 

"No," she answered, condensing an entire conversation into one word.

 

"Uncle Bill took my cap," Emily informed Mulder, as if expecting Mulder to do something about that. "He says you're a sorry S-O-D."

 

"I'll get you another cap. Come on, honey," Dana said. Neither Dana’s feet nor daughter moved. 

 

"I want my real story," Emily said, but no one answered her.

 

It was no accident they both chose this corner of the park; they took Emily ice-skating on Wollman Rink during the winter. Dana had met Will there, and they’d played in the snow with Will and Em. This was where, one night, Mulder and Dana sat watching the snow glisten silver in the streetlights and enjoying the solitude. This part of Central Park was full of happy memories from a time he categorized as 'before.'

 

Mulder was hemorrhaging, and he desperately needed a nurse before he bled out.

 

"Dana-" He put his hand on her upper arm. "Please talk to me. Tell me what happened. What changed? I thought you wanted marriage, children. I, I thought you wanted me."

 

"Nothing changed." She looked past him. Mulder glanced over to see Diana approaching and Gibson close by. "Be careful, Mulder."

 

"No, um, she's not- Her son wanted to meet me," he tried to explain, but Dana looked away. He was drunk too, or at least on his way to drunk. Shit. He dropped his hand. "Dana, don't do this. I was thinking of going to the movies this afternoon. Come with me. You and Emily. It's either 'Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy,' or 'Revenge of the Creature.' Considering what happened to the creature in the last movie, his revenge should be pretty good."

 

She shook her head and turned to leave. "Take care of yourself."

 

"What about Lincoln's funeral train?" Mulder asked quickly. "It's, it's tonight. Meet me at the station. Seven o'clock."

 

She looked so sad he thought he might break. The muscles in his abdomen quivered dangerously.

 

"I can't." She gave Emily's hand a determined tug and didn’t meet his eyes.

 

"Okay," he said, barely breath with words.

 

"I want my real story," Emily protested, refusing to move. "Mulder!"

 

He knew Dana struggled not cry in front of him or Diana or a park full of strangers. He tasted Dana’s pain in his mouth like peppery gunpowder.

 

"I will read you a story," Dana promised Emily, her voice wavering.

 

"I want Mulder's real story!"

 

"She wants ‘The Velveteen Rabbit,’" he said. "We read it together. While she was at your mother's, I'd read it over the telephone at bedtime."

 

He still did, but Dana didn't know. A few weeks ago, Mulder called, Dana had been asleep, and Emily picked up the telephone at Mrs. Scully's house in DC.

 

He swallowed. His chest ached and his throat felt tight.

 

"Okay," Dana managed to say. "We'll get ‘The Velveteen Rabbit,’ okay?" She urged Emily desperately, "Let's go get it."

 

"Dana-" He ran out of breath.

 

She picked Emily up, and turned to Mulder long enough to say, "Goodbye," softly.

 

"Goodbye," he said automatically, and watched her walk away with Emily looking back at him. He raised his hand, and Emily raised hers, waving. Em thought he'd call tonight to read to her, but he wouldn't.

 

Mulder should go after her - offer to carry Emily since Dana's wrist was injured. Ask to drive them home, buy them lunch, or accompany them to the bookstore. Anything except let her walk away. Instead, he stood as the soap bubble moment continued to quiver in the spring breeze, reflecting a warped pastel version of life, and vanished.

 

"Are you okay?" Diana asked from behind him, making Mulder jump and allowing life to return to normal speed instead of playing in vivid Technicolor slow-motion.

 

"I'm fine," Mulder answered tersely, and sniffed. "Why wouldn't I be?"

 

"That was Dana Scully, wasn't it? Dana Scully and Emily?"

 

Still upset and looking for a target, he demanded, "How did you know?"

 

"I saw the pictures in the paper. Calm down, honey."

 

Mulder turned, looking critically at Diana. "How did you know her daughter is 'Emily?"

 

Diana shrugged, casually tossing her hair back from her shoulders. "You told me."

 

Mulder folded his arms and stepped away. "No, I didn't, and her name wasn't in the papers."

 

"Of course you told me. What are you getting so upset about?" She moved like she would take Mulder's hand, but didn't.

 

Gibson ambled back, except he ambled back to Mulder rather than his 'mother.'

 

Mulder had been intimately acquainted with two women who had children, and he'd bet money Diana had never been heavily pregnant. She was a model, though. He'd seen her in a few ads in Life and Look, but also in Will's cheap stag magazines. As she'd said, she wasn't an angel.

 

"Diana, I didn't tell you Emily's name. I'm sure of it."

 

"Then how would I know?"

 

Mulder stepped back, tilting his chin up. "I don't know, Diana. How would you? Why would you drive to the South End of Boston for a cup of coffee if your hotel was across town? Were you following me? Having a child, being a widow, being unwed: you keep remaking yourself into what you think I want. You even smell like Dana. How do you manage that?"  

 

"Do you have any idea how insanely paranoid you sound, Fox?"

 

He wet his lips, trying to put the pieces together, but not quite succeeding. "Yes, I do. But I didn't tell you Emily's name, Diana," he said firmly.

 

Diana folded her arms over her chest unhappily. With her long, dark hair and dark eyes, she reminded him of what Samantha might have looked like as an adult. His id might have a few wires crossed, Mulder realized.

 

“What did you mean ‘Dana betrayed me?’” Mulder demanded. “She was kidnapped. How is being kidnapped a betrayal?”

 

Gibson headed toward the ducks again, but Diana didn’t seem to notice.

 

"Fox-" She started again to take his hand.

 

“Yes, Dana and I dated for a few months, and I care for her and her daughter. I can’t begin to express my gratitude to the policemen who found her, and the doctors and nurses who saved her life.” The doctors and nurses and D.C. police developed convenient memory lapses in exchange for cash. No one knew about the abortion. Frohike had covered up the truth better than any military bulldozer. He’d even provided a gallant cover story which Mulder had been required to memorize. “Yes, we’d talked about getting married, but she’s experienced a horrible ordeal. She doesn’t need flashbulbs popping in her face and strangers following her, and that’s what dating me involves. That’s not betrayal; that’s survival.”

 

“Of course it is.”

 

“Why did you say that? What is it you think you know?”

 

"Nothing. Fox, you're upset. Let's go back to your apartment and-"

 

He shook his head. “How do you know her daughter’s name, and why would you say Dana betrayed me?”

 

He'd steered clear of the young women obsessed with baseball players. The baseball Annies, reporters called them, after Annie Steinhagen, a nineteen-year-old girl who invited a Phillies first baseman to her hotel room and shot him in the chest. Eddie Waitkus almost died of the gunshot wound, Annie Steinhagen spend the past three years in a mental asylum, and Mulder’s wiser teammates became more judicious about taking female fans to bed.

 

Diana didn’t remind Mulder of those women, though. She was promiscuous and either a liar or a bad mother, but he wouldn’t win the Father of the Year award, either. Something about Diana wasn't right, though. Everything about her wasn't right. Mulder might be hollow, and he might be self-destructive, but he wasn't stupid. He was a big boy; he could destroy his life without her help, thank you very much.

 

"Fox-" she said again.

 

"No," he said, and stepped away. "I don't know what this game is, but I don't want to play anymore. Goodbye, Diana."

 

He turned and walked away, never looking back. Within a few minutes, the winding path crested the little hill and brought him near the entrance to Central Park. The bench was empty - the bench where he and Dana had sat that winter night. Mulder stopped, staring at it drunkenly.

 

He left Diana behind. Dana and Emily were long gone. Will was gone. Even Phoebe wouldn’t speak to him. In a city of seven million people, Mulder was alone.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder had spent entire afternoons leaning on the call button, trying to get Dana to buzz him in, so he didn't bother. Fortunately, she'd chosen an apartment building full of trusting old ladies, and he had no trouble shoving his foot in the security door and stumbling in after one of them. 

 

"Mulder?" Dana pulled her robe closed and starred at him. As though intoxicated, estranged, ex-fiancés didn't break into her building and show up on her welcome mat every Sunday night at ten o'clock.

 

"I, um, I-I have a splinter," Mulder bumbled and wondered how no one had ever revoked his English language privileges. He held out his thumb as proof, stretching the skin taut for her inspection. "Hi, Dana."

 

"Have you been drinking?"

 

"Oh, I-I have been drinking." He poked at the sliver of wood in Mr. Thumbkin to make sure it still smarted. It did. "I was, uh, sitting around this evening - alone - fiddling with the phone, so I could call you again and you could not answer-"

 

"You need to leave." 

 

"So, I started fiddling with the phone-" Mulder leaned against the door jamb to help keep the room level and tried not to lose his place in the story. "-and I, uh, unscrewed the little cover on the receiver." He pantomimed unscrewing the top of his thumb for clarification He reached in his pocket and handed her the small electronic device. "I don't think that's from Ma Bell."

 

Dana examined the bug, and gestured for him to come in. She closed and locked the door behind him.

 

"The woman in the park today: I thought she told one lie and got a carried away. But she bugged my phone. She spied on my life and set herself up as someone different than she was, but I don't know why. You weren't a set-up, were you?"

 

"No, I'm not a set-up," she said quietly. Dana steered Mulder to the kitchen, parked him in a wooden chair, and turned on the burner under the teakettle awkwardly with her left hand. A calico cat strolled in, hopped up on the table, and arched his back to be petted.

 

"Em's cat came back," he mumbled, stroking him. "I couldn't find him."

 

"He keeps showing up." Dana rummaged through the kitchen cabinets.

 

"That's what happens when you feed them." He pursed his lips, making sloppy kissy-faces at the cat, who looked at Mulder with disdain.  

 

"You're drunk, Mulder. Once you sober up in the morning, you're going to realize how bizarre this all sounds."

 

"I know now how bizarre it all sounds now. How. Now." Mulder blinked, sensing something wrong with the sentence. He formed a few more silent 'ow' sounds with his mouth for the pleasure of it and the cat's amusement.

 

Dana sighed. She turned away, but he caught the sleeve of her robe, pulling her back to him. "Tell me 'bout the babies, Dana."

 

"Babies?"

 

Still holding her left cuff so she couldn't escape, he ran his fingers over the front of her robe, over her soft, flat abdomen. "Babies. Baby. I wanna know."

 

"I don't remember. It's a blur."

 

"Tell me about the blur. Tell me-" He pushed aside the soft fabric of her robe and pajama top so his palm was against her bare stomach. "Tell me why."

 

She stood in front of him, as still as a statue.   

 

"I saw the, um... I picked up your mail, made sure the rent and bills got paid. In March- I thought it was something from nursing school, but you start this fall. Georgetown University Medical School. I didn't think about it until Bill said you'd, uh, you know... You couldn't go to doctor school with a baby coming." He exhaled and leaned his head into the curve of her waist. "Babies. With babies coming."

 

"Is that what you think happened?"

 

"I thought it was. I told myself it was." Mulder nuzzled against her. "I told myself a lot of things. I'm not sure of any of them. I don't know what to believe." He let his head fall back. He rotated it, trying to redistribute the thick liquid in it. "Ah, Jesus, Dana. I'm not crazy, am I?"

 

"Not crazy: inebriated. You need to go."

 

"I don't have anywhere to go," he told her emptily.

 

"What do you mean?"

 

"I don't."

 

"Go home."

 

"I don't have a home. I have an empty apartment in a hotel with a bugged telephone."

 

She stroked his hair. "I wasn't going to go, Mulder. To Georgetown. I didn't tell you I got into medical school because I wasn't going to go." He reached up and across his chest to take her hand, knowing it would be there. "I was going to marry you."

 

"I was going to marry you," he said sadly.

 

"I don't know what happened."

 

"I don't know either," he agreed, not sure if they were even having the same conversation. "I don't know what to do." He looked at her: one part lost, one part drunk, and three parts empty. His heart beat out of habit.

 

Dana let go of his hand and stepped away. Her bandaged right wrist rested across her stomach. "I don't answer the phone because I don't know what to say to you," she confessed. "I don't have any answers. I didn't answer the door because I knew I couldn't stand having to face you. I'm sorry, Mulder."

 

The teakettle gurgled purposefully and Dana hurried to soothe it. Her back to him, she went about the business of making a cup of tea he wouldn’t drink.

 

Still posted on the front of her refrigerator, beside Emily's drawings, was a note on Bergdorf Goodman stationery with 'Thank you for the cookies. Love, Mulder' on it. Nearby hung a second, hasty one on a yellow pad also in his handwriting: 'Dana, I'm taking Emily back to The Plaza with Will and me. Please call. I'm so worried about you. Love, Mulder.' He wrote it in January, and it must have still been there when Dana returned to her apartment a few weeks ago. Seemed as if she would have thrown it away. Seemed as if, since she didn't want him - or want to see him or talk to him or have children by him - she'd take down notes from him as well.

 

"I'm sorry, too, Dana," Mulder said. "For whatever my part in this was."

 

She'd lost the sugar, and conducted a thorough, focused search of the kitchen cabinet without looking at him. She checked a second cabinet, and a third. Still not finding it, she closed the final cabinet door hard and braced her hand against the counter, her back to him. He felt her aching.

 

He stood up, uncertain what to do, but before he could think of anything, Emily's voice called out.

 

"It's okay, honey," Dana called back, her voice wavering. Mulder started toward the hallway out of habit, but Dana held up her bandaged hand for him to stop. "Everything's okay. Go back to sleep."

 

There was a cough from the back of the apartment. He and Dana stood frozen, like thieves caught red-handed. After a minute, Dana went to check. She returned to the kitchen, nodding Em had fallen back to sleep.

 

"Is she feeling better?" he asked softly. "Did the doctors figure out what's wrong?"

 

"Auto-immune hemolytic anemia. Her immune system is malfunctioning, attacking her own red blood cells."

 

"That doesn't sound good."

 

"It isn't. Today was a good day, so we went to the park. The doctors say they can help her, and I want to believe them." She swallowed. "She waited for you to call even though I told her over and over you weren't going to. She misses you. She keeps asking when she'll see Will and Mulder."

 

"Will and Mulder miss her."

 

"You can... Come on, she's asleep." Dana took his hand, leading him silently down the hallway and to the first bedroom.

 

Dana had a vaporizer going in Emily's room, and the comforting scent of menthol filled the air. The calico cat slipped past them and leaped up on Emily's bed. He made a few laps across her feet, and lay down, keeping a wary eye on them. Emily shifted, her mouth moving in innocent dreams. A new, souvenir Yankees’ cap sat on the nightstand, along with a library copy of “The Velveteen Rabbit.”

 

"She looks fine."

 

"She's not."

 

He put his arms around Dana's shoulders as they watched her daughter sleep. She put her hand over his again, and the world grew steadier.

 

"How's Will?" she asked quietly.

 

"In trouble at school, most of the time. Angry. Full of questions I can’t answer."

 

"Is he living with you?"

 

"No. When Phoebe showed up with police, Will went back to live with her during the week. There is no chance of me getting custody of him, so I told Byers to drop it. But I've pissed Phoebe off. She doesn't want me seeing Will at all, and with everything that's happened... We have a hearing at the end of the month."

 

"Your plan is to drink yourself to death between now and then?"

 

"That's my plan, yes." He slurred the /s/. "I think I'm doing well, don't you?"

 

He stepped back, guiding her into the hallway and turning her toward him.

 

"Stay with me," she said, barely audible. She closed her eyes as though she made a wish and with more conviction asked, "Will you stay here tonight?"

 

His head started shaking 'no' before his mouth formed the words. "My car's parked outside. What will your neighbors say?"

 

"You mean the neighbors who babysit my illegitimate daughter? The ones who sent me get-well cards at my mother's house while I recovered from an abortion? I think my reputation's shot. No nice boy will marry me."

 

"Jesus, Dana..." He swallowed. "I've had too much to drink." Even if he swore it wouldn't, mixing alcohol and sex made him a rough, impetuous lover. Phoebe and Diana might like it, but he doubted Dana would. "Too much to be nice."

 

"I don't care. I don't want nice." She stepped closer, resting her hands on his hips and her forehead against his chest. "I want you. Please. Stay with me. But don't be here when Emily wakes up. Don't let her see you. And I'll come to you and I won't let Will see me."

 

"You have no idea-" He put his arms around her, trying to protect her from this unnamed, unformed 'them.'

 

Mulder followed her into her bedroom. He stepped out of his shoes as he told himself what an amazingly bad idea this was. "Dana, I want to be careful about another baby. I don't mean to insult you, but I-I-I can't... Not again. I can't."

 

She slipped her robe off and helped him with the buttons on his shirt before they lay down face to face. "The doctor said I can’t have any more children. You don't need to worry about being careful."

 

Mulder stared at her, suddenly a lot soberer.

 

"I'm sorry. That's all I can tell you," she whispered, avoiding his eyes.

 

His face and chest felt hot, and his stomach tightened. "What happened?" Damn it, he needed his old Army rifle and someone to point it at. "If you didn’t do this, who did? Who's responsible?" he demanded, his blood boiling. "Because I want them to pay."

 

"No." She shook her head, seeming frightened. "You promised me. Do you know how quickly you could become a communist? Or a homosexual? A pedophile? It doesn't matter who you are, they will get to you."

 

"But I'm not a communist, homosexual pedophile."

 

She held his gaze. "You are if they say you are. They will chip away at you until there is nothing left. Like they have with me."

 

"Dana-" he started hoarsely but didn't know what else to say.

 

He lay still as she kissed him, moving her lips across his jaw and down his neck. She put his hand on her breast, encouraging him, telling him it was okay. He wanted so much to close his eyes and get lost in her, one more or a thousand more times. If there was nothing left, why the hell not, he told himself.

 

His lips found hers, hungry and careless. He pulled her against him, pushing her legs apart with his knee. He ran his hands over her roughly, and felt her fingers in his hair. She invited, so why not. If that was the kind of girl she was, he could certainly be that kind of boy.

 

Time became disjointed and the rest of the universe faded away. His rational mind began to shut down as his instincts took over, but even his instincts couldn't hate her. He couldn't get dressed in the dark in an hour, sore and battle-scared and satisfied, and walk away hating himself. Not without putting a gun to his head.

 

"Dana-" He pulled back. She stopped moving as well. She looked at him, two sad blue eyes in the darkness. "I can't," he said.

 

She trailed her fingers low across his abdomen, still inviting. He obviously physically could. "You're sure?"

 

"I can't- It's not... I'm sure. I don't think there's nothing left." He touched her cheek before he rested his hand on her waist. "Maybe it looks like it, but I'm not going to believe that."

 

"Will you stay? Like you used to?"

 

There had been a handful of nights last winter they'd made love and he stayed with her while Emily slept or dawn came. He'd lay awake, holding her and keeping watch as she slept.

 

He nodded again. "I'll stay. Go to sleep. I'll be gone when you and Emily wake up."

 

"And then?"

 

"I don't know," he told her honestly. "I'll call you as soon as I buy a new telephone. Sleep," he repeated.

 

She shifted several times, trying to find a comfortable position that included him. Her bedroom window was open and the night breeze blew in, making the curtains flutter. Winter had ended. Spring arrived, and he hadn't noticed.

 

"There will be a price, Mulder," she promised him in the darkness. "If you stay."

 

She didn't mean ‘stay the night.’ She meant stay with her.

 

"Everything has a price." He put his arms around her, closed his eyes, and felt breeze from the open window on his face. It was baseball season. "The trick is knowing what's valuable, what's worth it."

 

"What do you think I'm worth?"

 

"Anything I have."

 

"You have a great deal, Mulder."

 

"I know," he said. But being not dead wasn't the same as being alive. He couldn't dictate his life, but at least he could be available for it.

 

*~*~*~*

 

End: A Moment in the Sun, Part II


	2. Chapter 2

Begin: A Moment in the Sun, part III

 

*~*~*~*

 

The sun seemed more distant, less warm, less welcoming than last year, but at least Mulder saw it flitting behind the clouds.

 

He and Dana emerged from winter as different people. Dana flinched at loud noises, flashes of light, unexpected touches. Mulder found himself scanning crowds, wondering who was friend and who was foe. He sensed eyes following him but saw no one. If Mulder could sleep, he dreamed of boxcars and files and pregnant women with long needles descending into their bellies. He watched the shadows. He watched for Them, whoever They were. Mulder had nightmares of Dana having nightmares. He hated the men who did this to her. To him. Mulder wanted to know why, but no one would tell him. He and Dana didn't make love, they didn't talk about the future and, after the night he showed up drunk on her doorstep, they never talked about her disappearance or the unborn babies that disappeared with her. They couldn’t go back, so Mulder stumbled forward toward an undetermined future where all bets were off and there was no more innocence. He told himself he would heal. He healed quickly.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder reasoned he didn't tell Will about seeing Dana Scully again because Mulder had nothing to tell and William would never know. He didn't tell Frohike or Byers because it was none of their damn business.

 

Mulder and Dana had a summer fling of the cautious, mundane kind - the counterpart to their impetuous winter passion. It was no less real, just love licking its wounds.

 

Mulder called her on the telephone, sometimes several times a day. If he was in New York, they went to movies, got deli takeout, or took Emily to the park. Their time together was quietly, carefully casual. They might hold hands or kiss, but nothing more. He felt much tenderness but little passion. Dana never asked Mulder about other women, but he could have told her honestly none existed. Still, he didn't buy Dana gifts, or send flowers, or invite her to watch the Fourth of July fireworks from The Plaza. There were no fancy restaurants, no elegant parties, no flashbulbs or headlines. No big grownup dates. If Mulder appeared at public functions, over Frohike's increasing objections, he did it alone.

 

Mulder started rowing again and skimmed the river as the sun rose over the city. He sat in a club in Harlem, hiding in the shadows; he listened to the Colored jazz and blues singers, and let his mind wander. He swam laps at the Hotel St. George late at night, the only one in the saltwater pool. He went to Brooklyn Heights and double-parked in front of a big brownstone on a corner lot with window boxes and a place for an herb garden and a cat curled up asleep in a front window. It was no longer for sale. A boy's bicycle leaned against the front stoop and a maid hung diapers on a clothesline in the back yard. Until school let out, Mulder drove to Packer Institute to sit in his car and make sure Phoebe's housekeeper picked up William. When Will looked for Mulder - and Will always did - Mulder waved and Will waved back.

 

Instead of the exclusive Manhattan AA meeting Frohike wanted him attending, Mulder migrated to one near Dana's neighborhood so afterward he could drive past her apartment and see her silhouette through the curtains. If he found a parking place, he stopped by and she fed him macaroni and cheese and they watched television. If he didn’t find a space, he called her from The Plaza. He told himself he let Fate decide but expanded his radius of acceptable parking spaces to within six blocks of her apartment. Eight blocks on a bad night.

 

Men had a lot of time on their hands if they didn't drink or play baseball.

 

In mid-July, after Emily was in bed, Mulder loitered in Dana's kitchen and listened to the radio as Dana washed the dinner dishes. Mulder found himself looking at the old notes stuck to the front of her Frigidaire. The ink was faded. Emily’s chocolate fingerprint marked the Bergdorf Goodman stationery, but Dana hadn't taken them down.

 

Mulder put his hand on Dana’s shoulder. She turned. He leaned down and kissed her. Not a polite greeting or goodnight kiss, but the kind where his whole body relaxed and he let himself get lost in her. The rest of the world faded into background noise, and he let the wind blow him wherever Fate intended. He felt a warm, wet hand on his chest, and her mouth moving against his. He closed his eyes, his mind slowing and his heart beating faster. He ran his fingers through her hair and stepped closer, the old fire beginning to kindle between them.

 

He had no idea what happened next.

 

Dana pulled back, telling him, "Stop," and sounding frightened.

 

Mulder nodded, stepped back, and stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets. "I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking."

 

"It's okay."

 

He slouched back against the counter, studied his shoes for a while, and glanced at her. She didn't seem angry. If he had to label what he sensed from her, he’d call it wistful.

 

"You think so?" he asked half-heartedly. "It will be okay?"

 

"No guarantees," she reminded him.

 

He shrugged one shoulder. "It wasn't perfect to begin with."

 

He saw a secret, fleeting smile. "It was pretty damn close."

 

"It was."

 

He told her goodnight. When he reached the sidewalk in front of Dana’s apartment building, her wet hand print remained on his shirt, over his heart.

 

The quiet hours blended into days and into warm summer months, slipping by as a clock counted down. It was easy to pretend they were normal and nothing had ever gone wrong. Before Mulder knew it though, August arrived.

 

After Dana’s final shift at the hospital, they went for a pizza pie at Patsy Grimaldi's place in Brooklyn - a thin, charred crust topped with tomato sauce, fresh basil, and a few pieces of mozzarella baked quickly in a coal-fired oven. It was simple and honest, and how they began last fall before everything got so complicated.

 

Dana started medical school in Georgetown in the September. She'd taken a position as an ER nurse there, rented a little apartment near the university and, in typical Dana fashion, on the surface everything looked in perfect order. After dinner, they walked up the bridge at twilight, Emily sitting on his shoulders and Dana's hand in his. At the apex of the Brooklyn Bridge, the evening breeze blew against his face and Manhattan spread out before them. Mulder could pretend all he wanted, heal all he wanted, but it was time to say goodbye.

 

"Will you miss it?" he asked Dana. Her hand felt warm in his. "This city is going to be awfully quiet without you. I'm going to have to take up building model railroads. Skeet shooting. Golf. No, maybe not golf."

 

"William will be back soon," she answered evasively. "He'll keep you busy."

 

Emily rested her palms on top of Mulder’s head, watching the lights of Manhattan from her high vantage point. She had good days and bad days, but the last month was more good than bad. If asked, Mulder would advise Dana not to go to medical school - to spend every moment she could with her daughter even if it meant sacrificing other things. She'd blink and her little girl would be a teenager. He knew Dana needed a direction, a fresh start, but school and work would be there. Enjoy your baby, he would have told her, especially since you'll never have another.

 

As he thought it, Mulder realized no matter how the dust settled, he'd never have another baby either. Not with Dana, and he couldn't fathom marrying anyone else.

 

He said none of those things, of course.

 

"Duke Ellington is at The Rainbow Room again," Mulder told her instead. "Will you let me take you out on the town on Friday, one last time before you ship out?"

 

Last winter, before they became lovers, they'd gone to Rockefeller Center and danced to Duke Ellington and his band. Dana had a dry martini. Mulder had a gin and tonic, hold the gin. He called from the coat room to check Will was spending the night with the friend William claimed he was; Dana called to make sure Emily went to bed at her babysitter's apartment. Another martini, another tonic water, and another spin on the Rainbow Room's revolving dance floor. They laughed and danced and she felt wonderful in his arms. Time whirled past unchecked, and it was snowing in earnest as he'd driven Dana home. He carried Emily up all those steps for her, a warm little head asleep against his shoulder. As Mulder kissed Dana goodnight in the wee hours, he tasted tart, spicy gin on her lips. He kept telling himself she was a nice girl and managed to peel himself away and drive home. Late at night, as he undressed to go to bed alone, he could smell her perfume on his clothes.

 

Love was fire, and a flame still flickered low in his abdomen at the memory. He'd do it all again, even it meant getting burnt.

 

"That's a 'no' to Ellington, isn't it?" Mulder said. "You leave, Will comes home, and I figure out what to do with the rest of my life."

 

She looked up at him as the wind blew her hair around her face. She was beautiful. "What have you always wanted to do?"

 

"Besides be normal?" He had one hand on Emily's ankle, holding her securely. "I wanted to be a criminal psychologist. Work for the FBI. Catch the bad guys. Figure out what happened to my sister. I have the beginnings of a dissertation I drag out every now and then."

 

"Finish it."

 

"Then what?"

 

"Whatever comes," she answered.

 

He considered several seconds while she studied his profile. That flame flickered inside him, and the city lights twinkled. The summer night was magical and all things seemed possible. "Okay," he agreed. "I'll send a telegram to Oxford and see about it. I'll still have some free time, though."

 

"You raise your son and save the world. Don't you think that's a full-time job, Superman?"

 

He smiled, and she squeezed his hand.

 

"I'll miss you."

 

"I'll miss you, too," she assured him quietly.

 

Mulder saw people watching them, but no fans intruded to ask for an autograph or take a photo. There was the three of them, and it seemed so simple. They lingered until the sun disappeared. Emily began to complain she was cold, so they turned back toward Brooklyn.

 

"Will you stay with me tonight? You and Emily? Will's room is vacant.” Losing his nerve, he said, "Your apartment is full of boxes, and mine is empty. Plus, there's parking at The Plaza. There's never, ever any parking in your neighborhood. I hate driving you home and spending an hour hunting for a parking space I'm going to use for ten minutes."

 

"You could stop the car and let us out," Dana said, again not answering his original question but addressing a dozen unspoken ones. "Or Emily and I could take the subway home."

 

A flashy roadster convertible approached with the Dodgers' new pitcher behind the wheel. In the passenger seat, Melvin Frohike looked, and looked again at Mulder and Dana as they stood beneath the ornate streetlight on the bridge, holding hands, with Emily on Mulder's shoulders.

 

His agent did not look happy.

 

Mulder nodded at Frohike and returned his attention to Dana.

 

He loved her against all odds and against his better judgment. Perhaps the best a man could hope for was to end up with the right regrets.

 

"I'll find a parking place," he promised.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Frohike waited until the next morning to call, meaning he assumed Mulder and Dana spent the night together. It also meant Frohike had the whole night to work himself into a furry little paranoid tizzy.

 

"You have to mention these things to me," his agent said as soon as Mulder picked up the telephone at The Plaza. "How long has this been going on? This is the type of thing I specifically need to know. Remember all the times I said you were never any trouble? Too boring for my talents? I hereby withdraw all those statements."

 

"Good morning, Melvin," Mulder answered sarcastically. He took a sip of coffee. "How nice of you to call. Is something on your mind?"

 

"What are you thinking? Walk away. You can’t begin to express your gratitude to the police who found her and the doctors and nurses who blah-blah-blah and walk away. If the truth gets out, you are sorry for her misfortune, but you had nothing to do with it. Was I unclear?" A long, unhappy sigh punctuated the other end of the telephone line. "There is no second chance here, Mulder," his agent warned. "I know you love her. I know, but whatever happened to her and the babies, it takes one headline, one photo, and you will lose William completely. Those nice checks from Cadillac and Wheaties: you can kiss them goodbye, as well. There won’t be any more homeruns to bank on. All you have is the image, but that all-American image is worth a million dollars, if you don't screw it up."

 

Mulder drummed his fingers against the warm outside of the coffee mug. "I understand, Frohike."

 

"If you understand, why didn't you tell me? All I heard about last winter was her, but this summer, not a word. I can keep a lid on what happened - but not if reporters start poking around or it happens again. Not with Phoebe gunning for you. One new photo of you two that runs in the tabloids with a juicy quote from a cop-"

 

"Frohike, I understand," Mulder assured him.

 

"I want you at a charity gala in a tuxedo with a virginal starlet on your arm before the week is out," his agent ordered. "No more stag appearances. You don’t have to kiss her, but I want an arm around her shoulders as you wave to the cameras."

 

"No dice, Frohike."

 

As if Mulder hadn’t objected, Frohike continued. "I want you and Will at a baseball game eating hotdogs and rooting for the home team. I'm setting up an interview with Look Magazine. We're talking about your WWII service and your son and your baseball career, and I want a cover photo of you at Yankee Stadium. Preferably shirtless, tan, and with an American flag in the background. If the reporter asks about your love life, let me do the talking."

 

"That's what I pay you for," Mulder reminded him.

 

"You pay me to look out for you, and you're making that damn difficult to do." Frohike paused. "Does William know you're seeing her again?"

 

"Not exactly," Mulder said evasively.

 

Frohike made a disapproving noise in the back of his throat. "John Byers really will have a heart attack."

 

"I pay Byers enough he can see a team of world-class doctors."

 

His agent cursed under his breath. "She needs a late husband. A father for her little girl. Do you want me to arrange that? I can arrange that." Frohike exhaled. "Tell me what's happening and I will handle it. Rule seven: don't lie to your agent. Are you marrying her? Dating her? What is your plan?"

 

"I have absolutely no plan," Mulder said honestly. "She's moving to Washington D.C. next Friday, and I offered to help her move. I need to be back in New York on Saturday to see Will. Beyond that, I have no plan. Sorry, Frohike." Mulder took a sip of coffee. He swallowed an extra time before he said, "All I know today is what you’ve always told me: you don't save a good pitcher for tomorrow. Tomorrow, it might rain."

 

Mulder heard an unhappy, but more resigned sigh.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder liked to keep track of things in his head: matches left in a box, gallons of gas in the car. He knew how many years until the sun burned out, leaving them all in frigid darkness, and he probably wouldn't drink all of the orange juice in his refrigerator before it went sour. Not that anyone was likely to ask him about either. Counting was comforting - a little game Mulder played with himself to keep some order in the universe and stay sane.

 

Bill Scully made twelve snide comments about Mulder between five and five-fifteen. That meant a projected average of four dozen per hour, and a hundred by sunset. At this rate, by the time they got Dana moved into her new apartment, Mulder would either have another restraining order against him or a new ulcer.

 

Mulder set the parking brake on the moving van, climbed down, and handed the keys back to the driver. Mulder didn’t bother saying 'I told you so,' because that would be petty and childish. Mulder had told them the truck could be backed around the corner and into the narrow Georgetown alley so they didn't have to carry Dana's things half a block. Bill and the movers insisted the turn was too tight. Mulder borrowed the keys and proceeded to slowly seesaw and angle the moving van so it didn't brush the cinder block wall perpendicular to the alley or the fences on either side.

 

"Nice job," Bill said sarcastically. “But you still have to get it out. If the truck’s damaged, Dana has to pay for it.”

 

“It won’t get damaged,” Mulder responded tightly. “I backed it in, and I can get it out.”

 

“You’ll pull it out, you mean? Be really careful? Clearly, that doesn’t work the way you think that works.”

 

Mulder felt his cheeks get hot.

 

Bill unfastened the latch on the back of the big van and threw the doors open. Mulder dodged to avoid getting bashed in the face. Emily, watching from the window of her new bedroom high above them, found that hilarious. Dana had rented an apartment in an old mansion chopped up into four apartments. Her rooms were, not surprisingly, on the third floor.

 

Bill grabbed a box and tossed it in Mulder’s direction. Out of masculine pride, Mulder caught the heavy box. He handed it off to the movers and turned. Another box hit him in the chest as Bill threw it off the back of the truck.

 

"Sorry," Bill said flippantly.

 

"Dropping twenty pounds that far means it weighs about seventy pounds as I catch it," Mulder explained. "If you'll slide the boxes to the edge of the truck and let me pick them up, it would be easier."

 

"I thought baseball players spent the off-season drinking and chasing skirts. Where did you find time to also become an expert on freight?"

 

"The docks of New York." Mulder’s ears burned. His patience wore thin, and little pinpricks of temper began to show through.

 

"Before you played baseball, you drove a truck?" Bill spoke as if Bill single-handedly piloted battleships for the Navy and Mulder’s intellect rivaled a box of rocks.

 

"For a few months." Mulder swore he wouldn’t say another word because that would be petty and childish.

 

Dana appeared at the back door of the big house. She folded her arms and cleared her throat. Mrs. Scully had glared in Mulder's direction as she arrived and confined herself to the attic apartment. In addition to the ongoing but unimaginative insults, Bill Scully kept Mulder within sight at all times. As if the second Bill turned his back, Mulder would rip off Dana’s clothes and wrestle her to the ground. Force himself on her as he laughed manically.

 

Despite Mulder’s vow, he said, “It was after I left school, but before I signed with the New York Yankees.”

 

“You drove a truck?” Bill repeated.

 

“Sometimes, I loaded, drove, and unloaded a truck. Depended on the day.”

 

Both moving men studied their shoes.

 

Bill glared down at Mulder. In the same condescending tone, he said, "It's good for young men to learn a trade." As her brother turned away, Mulder heard Bill mutter, "Why couldn't she have married the doctor?"

 

Dana returned inside. Once the coast was clear, in the interest of peace, Mulder explained, "There was a depression. I needed a job. I had a wife and a baby." Since Dana had mentioned Bill's wife had a baby on the way, Mulder said, "It was honest work. Don't underestimate what you'll do to take care of your child and its mother."

  

Bill Scully, carrying a box, stopped short. "I don't think I can underestimate what you'll do to take care of your child and its mother, Mr. Mulder."

 

Mulder would pay the fine or do the time in jail, he decided. It was worth it, except for not getting to see Will. Except for Will, Mulder would have dragged Bill out of the truck and demonstrated some skills from his third career option. As a soldier, if your weapon jammed and your knife was unavailable, the option remained of beating your enemy to death. Instead, Mulder gritted his teeth and said evenly, "Let’s get the truck unloaded, like we promised Dana. We’re both here to help.”

 

"My sister doesn’t need your help.”

 

Dana’s voice called warningly from a high window, “Bill. Mulder.”

 

Mulder relaxed his jaw and exhaled. “Let’s unload the truck,” he told Bill.

 

“You’re a miserable excuse for a man, you son-of-a-bitch,” Bill hissed as he glared down at Mulder and prepared to drop another box.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Long shadows reached across the weedy little lawn between Dana’s apartment building and the gravel alley. Across the alley, the sun sank behind a row of old mansions, all far better maintained than the one Dana just moved into. Mulder had sprawled on the lawn the second the empty moving van and Bill's Ford pulled away. The grass felt cool against his back, but the ground beneath the lawn remained warm.

 

"I hate that man," Mulder told Dana flatly, too exhausted to manage anger. "I don't care if he is your brother; I hate him."

 

"Can you move?" She looked down at Mulder.

 

"I need a nurse." Mulder wondered which part of him hurt the most. He raised his hand, reaching toward her. "Help. Pull."

 

"You didn't have to keep up with Bill, Superman. He's ten years younger than you and he's showing off. He'll be sore for weeks."

 

"Now you tell me." He sat up with a moan and got to his feet, knees cracking. "You always have stairs. I hate stairs, too."

 

"I know you hate stairs." She stepped closer. Her eyes moved over him nervously. "Are you hungry? You could rinse off while I-"

 

Mulder looked away. Will’s plane landed in New York this evening after a summer in England with Phoebe. Dana started medical school in Georgetown in a few weeks. Three hours by air and a lifetime away. Their lives no longer intersected unless they willed them too.

 

"Did you tell William you were in D.C.?"

 

"I told him I was here on business." He shoved his hands into his pockets. "I don't have to fly back tonight," someone using Mulder's voice replied. "I can't see him tonight, anyway. I could call him and catch a flight in the morning."

 

She looked at him like a beautiful solder who’d witnessed one too many battles.

 

"I wasn't asking to stay here," he lied. "I'm just not ready to say goodbye yet." Mulder shifted his feet and studied the grass.

 

"You could stay here. Maybe it would be easier to say goodbye in the morning," Dana invited, sounding shy.

 

"It won't be." Though that was exactly what tempted him. Spend one last night with her, fly back to New York, and start rebuilding his life. Again. "It will be harder."

 

"Maybe after dinner, then." She held open the back door of the big Victorian house for him. A steep, narrow stairway awaited.

 

"Maybe," Mulder mumbled, and stepped inside.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder sat on the floor of Dana’s little apartment amid the piles of boxes and wadded newspapers. Even with all the windows open and ceiling fans going, bread could have baked in the room. "Turn the television down, Will," he called into Dana's phone. "I can barely hear you."

 

"It's not the telly. Mother's having a welcome home party. Wait, I'll close my door." The music and chattering voices decreased a few decibels, and William picked up the receiver of his bedroom phone again. "Is that better?"

 

"A little.” Mulder pulled the front of his sweaty shirt away from his chest, hoping for cool air against his skin. His undershirt was damp, too. “How are you? How was the flight?"

 

"The flight was horrid. Beastly. I hate you, I hate my mother, I hate my shitty life, and I want one of the new Corvettes for my birthday," Will replied flippantly. "Buy me something, Daddy-O. Assuage me."

 

Mulder didn't tell Will to watch his mouth, since 'shitty' seemed an accurate description. "That's a stick-shift. You'll have to learn to drive a real transmission instead of one of the new automatics."

 

"So?"

 

"I'm saying-" Mulder sighed, not sure what to say. "I could fly up to Boston and drive my father's car down. My mother wants rid of it, and I could teach you on Saturdays. If you can drive that Porsche, you can drive anything you want."

 

"Whatever," Will said. "Will you be back by Saturday?"

 

"Of course. I'll be back for your baseball game tomorrow."

 

"You're allowed to come to my games?"

 

"As long as it's okay with you. Games, practices. All I'm doing is watching."

 

"People look at you. They look at you and then they look at me striking out."

 

"I'll wear a disguise." Mulder adjusted the empty box on the rug beside him so its edge lined up parallel to the wall. "A beard, sunglasses, high heels, and pink Chanel suit."

 

His son didn't seem to think that was funny. "I've missed most of the season, and I haven't been practicing."

 

"We can practice. The Yankees aren't playing; we'll go to the stadium." Mulder straightened another empty cardboard box.

 

Packer let Will play because Mulder had called the coach, explained the situation, and pleaded - though his son didn't know. Last May, the judge had looked at Will's second semester grades and stack of discipline slips, and let Phoebe have Will for the summer. Thankfully, rather than taking Will away, the judge was a baseball fan who advised Mulder to get his act together. Phoebe took Will to England with her - and sent him off to summer camp, as usual.

 

"Dad, I feel daft playing in front of you," Will admitted.

 

Sweat beaded on his forehead. "If you don't want me to come, I won't."

 

His son didn't answer, but he didn't tell Mulder not to come to the game, either.

 

"Will, that picture of me dropping the ball in the ninth inning a few years ago? The one that made the front page? I'll have it framed for you. Don't feel daft until they make jokes about you on 'Ed Sullivan.'"

 

"I thought the judge said-"   

 

"It's the same schedule: Friday night, Saturday, and Saturday night, and phone calls whenever we want. We have to follow the schedule. You can't come over during the week, and I can't pick you up or meet you anywhere. If the schedule changes, I'll let you know." Mulder tried to keep the anger out of his voice, and thought he succeeded. "But Byers said I can come to anything the public can attend, and I can come if your mother is there. I can come to your baseball games, school plays, teacher conferences. Bail hearings," he added, trying again to make a joke. "You can be at my apartment anytime you want as long as I'm not there. You could go tonight. Ask your mother and make sure it's okay."

 

Dana emerged from Emily's bedroom, nodding the little girl was asleep. Mulder hadn’t asked Dana not to speak or to conceal herself in any way, but she didn’t make a sound. She picked up a few forgotten glasses to take to the kitchen. She wore denim slacks and a sleeveless white shirt. He saw the back of her brassiere through the damp fabric. Her feet were bare; she’d even taken off her shoes so Will wouldn’t hear footsteps.

 

"Mother's busy with her friends,” Will said. “I'll leave her a note and go. She won't notice."

 

"No, ask her," Mulder said sternly. "Be sure. We can't mess this up, Will. And take a taxi. It's too late for you to walk or ride your bicycle."

 

"I don't have money for taxi fare." Mulder heard dresser drawers opening.

 

Dana returned, drying her hands on a dishtowel and still silent. Mulder reached up for her hand. "How do you not have taxi fare?” he asked. “I've been sending you money all summer."

 

"In pounds," Will said. "I can't pay an American taxi in pounds sterling. And it was a boys' camp in Yorkshire. Don't send me money and gifts, Dad. I didn't need more money or a camera or a hamper of cookies. I needed buxom American girls with loose morals."

 

Mulder chuckled. "I tried. I couldn't get the buxom American girl to stay in the cardboard box. She complained about the dark."

 

"I'm fifteen. For the love of God, Father, poke some holes in the top of that box, give her a torch, and post her Airmail straightaway."

 

Mulder leaned back against a bare wall in Dana's living room. The wall felt cool. "I love you, baby boy. Have the front desk at The Plaza pay the taxi. I'll reimburse them tomorrow."

 

"Are you certain?” The teenager betrayed his nonchalant cover. “You won't get in trouble if I come over?"

 

"It's fine. I'm not with you. I'm not even in the state. Ask your mother and have your mother’s doorman hail a taxi for you. Be good. I mean it. No guests, buxom or otherwise. There's orange juice in the refrigerator if you get thirsty."

 

"I'll see you at the game tomorrow," Will answered. "Dad, if you want me to ask Mother, she'll be keener on The Plaza if she doesn't think it's your idea. So I need to hang up the telephone."

 

Mulder nodded supportively, as though Will could see him, said his good-nights, and hung up the phone harder than necessary. He picked up and slammed the receiver down a few more times for good measure. 

 

Dana looked at him questioningly, but he shrugged.

 

"Is he okay?" she asked.

 

"He's going to my apartment for the night. Phoebe's throwing herself a party while he sits in his bedroom. I haven't seen him in three months, and she's..." He looked at the rug. "He said he hates me."

 

"He's angry." She sat beside him and leaned against a still-full cardboard box.

 

"He should be angry. I said he was staying with us and-” He bit his lip. Hard. “I messed it up. It's exactly what Frohike and Byers told me would happen."

 

Hurt lines formed between her brows.

 

Before she could speak, Mulder repeated, “I messed it up. I drank. I sat around feeling sorry for myself. I-” He started to say ‘screwed around,’ but couldn’t. Not while he looked her in the face. “It’s 1954 and he’s almost sixteen. I don’t have to be married or wear a skirt to make sure he eats and gets to school and goes to bed at a reasonable hour. I messed it up, Dana.”

 

If Dana had been standing in the courtroom last spring, pregnant, with Emily beside her and a wedding band on her finger, Mulder could have been staggering drunk with a prostitute on each arm, and he still would have walked out of the courtroom with Will.

 

Instead of arguing, Dana said, “He knows you tried. He knows you love him."

 

"What would you do? If I was Emily's father and I tried to take her away from you, how dirty would you fight? How much would you put her through? Would you send her away and refuse to tell me where she was? Would you put her on the stand? Would you show up with the police and take her?"

 

"You're not Emily’s father. That's not a fair question."

 

"But if I was." Mulder got to his feet and stood towering over her. “What would you do?”

 

"You are in a bad mood and you're looking for someone to take it out on. Are you asking if I think you're a good father?" She swallowed. “Or do you want to hear me say this is my fault? You lost Will because of me?”

 

Her hair curled in the humidity. A bead of perspiration slid down her chest and disappeared down her blouse, between her breasts. Her throat convulsed again.

 

His anger faded along with the sun. "Hell, Dana," he said tiredly. "I don't know what I want. I lost Samantha, I almost lost Will, and I'm about to say goodbye to you. I'm a thirty-nine year-old, divorced, out-of-work, ex-ballplayer. I wish God would kick me in the face and get it over with."

 

*~*~*~*

 

They absolutely, under no circumstances, no-way-no-how should be doing this, but that didn't stop them. Mulder’s sweaty shirt lay crumpled on the floor, and his shoes got toed-off and left hurriedly beside Dana’s bed. They'd been saying goodbye for twenty minutes, moving from her front door to her bedroom and shedding clothes along the way.

 

He admitted he was powerless over her. That was the first step.

 

Dana smelled like female, magnified - hours of lugging boxes in the August heat coating her skin. Her hair had dried in crisp strands behind her ears and across her forehead. A damp path of salt ran down each side of her neck. Mulder traced it with the tip of his tongue. He pushed her thin cotton blouse off her shoulders and unfastened her brassier, instinctively seeking where the trail led.

 

He could bury himself in her and forget. Le petite mort - the little death. Power and grace and love and hate: two bodies in the ancient dance of creation. One endless, magical hot summer night together. Something to think back on in fifty years and smile.

 

She would let him make love to her as gently or as roughly as he liked, and she would let him leave. She would even pretend to sleep so he wouldn't have to tell her goodbye. He could walk away. Except she was empty inside; he felt it as he touched her. Where those babies had been, where those months had been, she had an empty space. She ached so much she'd let him try to fill it. He couldn't, though.

 

"What are we doing, Dana?" he asked softly. He cupped her breast in his hand as they lay on the bare mattress. The folded sheets and naked pillows still sat on the dresser, and Venus watched through the open window. 

 

A metal fan hummed purposefully in the corner of her bedroom, cooling the sweat on their skin. Aside from that the air was still and the summer heat oppressive in the attic apartment.

 

"What are we doing?” he repeated. “Are we really saying goodbye?"

 

"I can't answer that for you," she whispered.

 

Mulder pushed up on his elbow, looking down at her. "I need you to answer that for me.” Sweat dampened his T-shirt and chilled his skin as the air from the fan blew over them. His shoulders ached, his knees ached, and he had a wasteland inside him. "Is it that you want me to, as the kids say, 'prove I love you,' Dana? I still want you?"

 

"Do you?" she asked in a young voice.

 

"Yes."

 

Several seconds passed before she said, "There's more at stake than us. We have children, families, responsibilities... You keep staring at my stomach and counting months with that kicked dog look in your eyes."

 

"I want it to be just us," he admitted. "Does that make me a horrible man? I want to stay here and make love to you tonight and not think about another human being. I'll deal with everything else tomorrow, but tonight, I want there to be you."

 

"No." She stroked his jaw. "No, I don't think that makes you a horrible man."

 

"I don't want to hurt you."

 

"You won't hurt me," she promised him softly.

 

She’d been nuzzling his throat as he spoke, making the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He felt her pause, and with her fingertip, follow the fine gold chain alongside his neck and beneath the cotton fabric of his T-shirt. Her finger traced the dainty cross on his chest. She stopped moving, he stopped moving. The fan in the corner hummed louder.

 

“I found it,” he said awkwardly, and lied, “After you were g-gone, I didn’t want to lose it.” Men didn’t wear necklaces, and Jewish men certainly didn’t wear little gold crosses. He’d put it on because he couldn’t stand looking at it, and kept it on because it was all he had left of her.

 

“You’ve worn it all this time?”

 

He nodded but avoided eye contact. "Emily and I had a deal. I told her I’d wear the necklace until you came back."

 

"I came back, Mulder." She ran her finger over the chain again.

 

"I'm not sure you did."

 

She looked up at him.

 

"We aren't those people anymore, Dana. We're never going to be those people again." He stared at the wall instead of her. "Those innocent, crazy-in-love people: they're gone. I want to rewind the movie and start over, but I can't."

 

"I'm sorry," she whispered sadly.

 

"So am I. But there is..." He searched for words. "There is rightness to my world with you in it, and without you there's a void I don't know how to fill." He exhaled. "We're off the map. I don't know where we go from here or if there is anywhere left to go. We can't start over, but we can start from here and have a different ending."

 

"Dead reckoning," she said, but Mulder shook his head he didn't understand. "It's a nautical term. Know your starting point, your distance and direction, and that gives your current position."

 

"Our current position is compromising." Mulder traced her bare nipple.

 

"With dead reckoning, mistakes are cumulative," she said. "One builds on the other."

 

She ran her fingertips through his hair as she looked up at him. She was still a nice, middle-class Irish girl and, in his heart, he was a nice, well-bred Jewish boy from Boston. They both knew making love was wrong. She offered because she thought she didn't have anything else to offer him, and Mulder accepted because he would take whatever he could get. He'd wanted the American dream - a wife, a few more children, a dog, a big house with a yard - but he'd take anything he could salvage.

 

Mulder leaned down, kissed her, and said, "Let’s stop acting like we're married, and get dressed. I'll catch a flight back to New York, call you once I get home, and I'll see you Labor Day weekend. We take it moment by moment, whatever comes. I'll tell Will... Something."

 

She nodded and reached for her blouse on the floor. Dana's surface seldom gave anything away. For a man who liked mysteries and mysterious women, she was the ultimate enigma.

 

He watched her dress, trying to sense what she might be feeling, but for once he couldn’t. "Dana, I need a little assurance."

 

"Of course I love you." She buttoned her blouse and tried to smooth her tousled hair.

 

He unclasped the necklace and left it on her dresser.   

 

They absolutely, under no circumstances, no-way-no-how, should be doing this, but that didn't seem to be stopping them.

 

*~*~*~*

 

In September, Mulder made a special, well-paid appearance before a Yankees home game. He stepped onto the familiar field once again to wave to the cheering crowd. That Saturday, he and Will stayed to eat hotdogs and watch the Philadelphia Athletics beat the Yankees 6-8. The reporters commented on how much father and son resembled each other and enjoyed the game. The picture that ran in the paper was of Mulder alone, after the game, looking out on the empty baseball field with his suit coat draped casually over his shoulder. He stayed in good shape, and rumors swirled he would return for one last season. Melvin Frohike rubbed his hands together and pointed Mulder toward the endorsements. Mulder cashed the check for his appearance, turned down the Morley radio ads, and got on a plane to Washington DC.

 

Healing was a matter of time, but also a matter of opportunity.

 

*~*~*~*

 

"Yes, clearly it's a house." Will surveyed the three-story brick from the curb. "We drove all the way from New York to see this?"

 

"Do you like it?" Mulder asked. He got out of the Porsche and rocked from his heels to his toes and back again.

 

"Yes, I suppose. It’s a house. A big, old house. What's so special about it?"

 

"It's my house, Will. I bought it."

 

"Okay," his son said skeptically. William looked around the front yard and cracked his gum. "Cool. An investment?"

 

"No- Well, yes, it's a good investment, but it's my house. If I'm not in New York, I'm going to live here. Go inside, look around."

 

"People don't bother you?" Will stepped inside the foyer and dropped his backpack at the foot of the stairs. It shocked the boy to find his father in any building lacking an elevator and a valet.

 

"Georgetown’s a quiet neighborhood. The mayor lives down the street. Between the driveway, the garage, and the curb, there are seven parking spaces within fifty feet of the front, side, or kitchen door,” he said, giving Will the grand tour. “I've been alternating. You know, I've never owned a house."

 

"You own hotels, Dad. A couple of them."

 

"I do not own hotels, Will. I own my apartment, your mother's apartment at The Drake and the one in London, and I own shares in companies that own hotels."

 

"If nothing else, you've personally paid for Mr. Byers' vacation house."

 

"True," Mulder conceded. "But this is different. This is mine."

 

"So the mystery is: why do you need a big house in Georgetown?"

 

"I've been thinking about it a long time. We could have Christmas here. There's a fireplace - a couple of them.” As the teenager scanned the piles of books and articles on the desk in the corner of the living room, Mulder said quickly, “That's nothing, Will. Leave it." His son had a sixth sense for focusing on exactly what he shouldn’t see and hearing what he shouldn’t hear.

 

"What's an X-file?" Will hit the typewriter's carriage return lever a few times, pushing the sheet of paper higher to see the page. "'Behavior Patterns in Stranger Killings,'" he read slowly. "What are you typing? I didn't know you could type. Can you take shorthand, too?"

 

"Pitman shorthand, not Gregg shorthand. I learned out of desperation at Oxford, but Gregg shorthand is what they use in the U.S."

 

"Really? There are kinds of shorthand?"

 

"Really."

 

He cracked his gum. "Cool." William started to open a file.

 

Mulder put his hand on top of it. "Will, leave it alone. I mean it. These are Agent Dales' FBI files and they have crime scene photos in them I don't want you seeing."

 

"What are you doing with FBI files?" he asked, puzzled.

 

"Research."

 

Will crossed his arms, looked like his mother, and waited.

 

"I'm working on a research paper. A big paper. A dissertation. A doctoral dissertation," Mulder admitted. "To finish school, I need to do my oral and written exams, and finish my dissertation."

 

"Then what?"

 

"Then I'll be finished." He felt foolish. "It's something I've been doing." 

 

"No, I mean why bother? Who's going to care?"

 

"I'll care."

 

Will shrugged. "Whatever. It seems daft to do all that work for nothing."

 

Mulder shrugged back. "I had some free time this summer."

 

His son turned and jogged up the wooden steps, indicating the discussion ended.

 

"The house was built in 1856. Red brick. Five bedrooms, four baths - three of which work," Mulder called, following him. "I thought the front bedroom could be yours, but we can switch if you want."

 

Will nodded, seeming at ease though under-whelmed. For a boy raised in Manhattan's best, this was nice but plain vanilla, exactly why Mulder liked it. It looked normal.

 

"You like it?" Mulder asked hopefully. "I want you to like it."

 

"I like it, I suppose." Will paused at the top of the stairs. He leaned against the ornate banister. "I give up. Why did you buy this particular house?"

 

"It's a good investment. And it has a great view."

 

"Of what?"

 

Mulder cocked his head toward the master bedroom, wanting Will to follow. Once there, Mulder picked up the flashlight on the windowsill. He blinked it twice at the house across the alley. After a moment, a light blinked back from the third floor window.

 

"At whom are we blinking?" Will asked in his proper Queen's English.

 

"Emily Scully. That's her bedroom in the back, and Dana's is in the front." Mulder set the flashlight on the windowsill and took a long breath. "They live there and I live here."

 

"For how long?"

 

"About a month." He worried his tongue against his teeth. "No, we're not getting married, but we started seeing each other again over the summer. Dana's in medical school, but right now she's at work at the hospital. She works and goes to school, both. She wants to be a doctor. Emily's been sick. I, uh-" He swallowed. He’d run out of plot points and started to fidget again.

 

Teenagers were never as nonchalant as they thought, but William had years of practice and he could come close. The faintest of hint of anger and uncertainty played across his face. "You're seeing Mrs. Scully again?" Will asked in his most carefully disinterested manner. "Miss Scully? Dating her?"

 

"If that's what you want to call it. If I'm in D.C. We go out to dinner or take Emily to the park if she feels up to it. Sometimes we go to a movie if I can keep Dana awake. They might be the most boring dates imaginable. Afterward, she goes to her home and I go to mine. We're not married; we're not going to act like we are."

 

His son studied Mulder. "Did she call off the wedding so she could go to university to be a doctor?"

 

"No."

 

"What happened last winter, Dad?"

 

Mulder shook his head. "I'm not going to discuss that with you."

 

"You're not going to discuss it?" Will echoed coolly. "You won't tell me what she did - or what you did - that she disappeared for months, reappeared, and ripped your heart out? It's my life, Father, and I'm not a child."

 

"I know you're not a child. But I'm not going to discuss it with you."

 

Will put his hands in the pockets of his denim jeans. He looked at the window across the alley. After a few seconds, he asked, "Why are you seeing her again if you're not going to marry her?"

 

Mulder said the first thing he thought. "Because I can't not see her."

 

Mulder saw another flicker of emotion across Will's face, this time fear. "You bought a house. A big house - big enough for a family."

 

"We are a family. You and me, Will."

 

"You and me have a posh apartment in New York, Daddy-O."

 

Inside Mulder’s stomach, butterflies flitting frantically. "Well, now you and me have a big, old house in Georgetown, too."

 

"An investment." Will's eyes were a shade darker than Mulder's, and when he focused them on someone they seemed piercing. "With a great view of the doll who broke your heart. Who you're not banging or marrying."

 

"Watch the mouth, William. Yes, with a great view and seven different parking spaces and three working bathrooms."

 

His son cracked his bubble gum.

 

"Will, remember our conversation last winter about swinging for the fences? Sometimes everyone says to play it safe, but a little voice inside your head says 'this is right' and 'go for broke,' despite the odds. You just know what's right, so you swing for the fences. And sometimes you miss.” Mulder paused. “Sometimes, though... I've never been sorry with your mother, Will. Sorry I don't make her happy, but never sorry I married her or we had you. I don't think I'll ever be sorry with Dana. No matter what. I still love her. There's the question of what to do with that love. I don't have an answer to that question so I'm doing the best I can."

 

Emily blinked her flashlight again. Mulder didn't move to blink back.

 

"Emily's been asking after you all week.” Mulder shoved his hands in his trouser pockets, a carbon copy of his son’s tense posture. “Dana left a casserole for us for dinner in case she doesn't make it home in time. I may be cooking. Or at least, lighting an oven.” He stopped for breath. “Say something, William."

 

Will cracked his gum again, looking unconvincingly nonchalant. "Cool."

 

*~*~*~*

 

"Come on. Here we go." Raindrops splattered on Mulder’s hat and his breath made white vapor in the darkness. He pulled Nurse Scully out of the passenger seat and steered her up the sidewalk to his house.

 

"I don't live here," Dana mumbled. "Who are you, again?"

 

"Your loyal chauffeur. Do you get in the car with anybody, little girl?"

 

"You looked safe enough."

 

"Then you didn't look closely." He gave her a helpful push up the front steps, but his hand landed on her backside instead of her back.

 

“Don’t get fresh, mister,” she cautioned blearily. On the front porch, she turned to look at him. "Why am I here?"

 

"Emily is here. Will watched her while I went to pick you up. I didn't want to take her out in the rain." Mulder put his arm around Dana’s shoulders and guided her inside the house.

 

"What happened to the sitter? I called her. She said she could stay late."

 

"She was tired. She has a typing test in the morning, and I told her she could go home about one. Emily's been over here all night."

 

Dana made an 'umh' noise without opening her mouth. She shuffled through the foyer and kitchen, and toward the back of the house. Mulder paused to pick up Emily, still sound asleep, off one end of the couch. He thanked Will, also sound asleep on the other end. Will made a similar but deeper 'umh' sound and burrowed farther into the cushions.

 

"Keep going," Mulder instructed. He gave Dana another nudge off the back porch and into the stormy night. "Almost there."

 

"It's raining." She plodded through the backyard and across the alley. The wind blew her uniform against her legs.

 

"I'll see what I can do about that."

 

"Thank you, Superman." Dana sounded as tired as she should after six hours of classes on Thursday followed by twenty-four hours in the ER. "Is it still Friday?"

 

"Early Saturday morning." Emily coughed under the blanket Mulder had covered her with. He adjusted her against his shoulder, making sure she could breathe. "What happened you had to work overtime?" 

 

He'd waited to pick her up at midnight - six hours past her normal shift - not wanting Dana to walk home alone so late. He went inside to ask where she was, and someone said to come back at four. Four Saturday morning stretched to five, and five-thirty before Dana emerged.

 

"Two nurses called in sick, and there was a bus wreck. How is William?"

 

"Up the stairs," he reminded her. Mulder shifted Emily again and followed Dana. "Will seems to like my house, and he's eaten every scrap of food in both our iceboxes. However, if he cracks his gum one more time, I may hold him down, pry open his mouth, and fish out that bubblegum. I understand Mr. Bouncy Bee's buzzer-ectomy more and more."

 

"Em's okay?"

 

"She's still a little warm, but otherwise she's okay. She's been asleep since about eight. According to Will, she's also 'cool.' I could send him to Harvard for what Packer costs, and he has a three-word vocabulary: 'cool,' 'daft,' and 'whatever.'"

 

"It's Saturday?" Dana gave her apartment door a frustrated kick when the lock and her key didn't work in harmony.  

 

"Saturday," Mulder answered. One-handed, he unlocked the door she'd locked, and he turned the knob. "Very early Saturday."

 

"I have to be at work at noon on Saturday." She surveyed her apartment, found it acceptable, and headed for the bedroom. She stepped out of her shoes and unpinned her cap as she went. After tucking Emily in, Mulder found Dana collapsed back across the bedspread, still wearing her white uniform. He saw spatters of something dark-colored on her skirt, and a smeared, bloody hand print on her breast.

 

"No. Get up,” he insisted. “You're soaked." 

 

"I can't move," She looked like a rag doll carelessly tossed on the bed. "Wake me at eleven."

 

"Oh, for God's sake!" He sat her up and jerked at the zipper on the back of her damp uniform. He averted his eyes from the lacy slip underneath, but she didn’t seem to care. "You can't keep doing this, Dana. You'll make yourself sick. Where are your pajamas?"

 

She blinked sleepily as he retrieved a towel. While he rubbed her hair, Dana snuggled up against him, still sitting on the side of her bed.

 

"You're not going back to work in less than six hours. The hospital can go to Hell," he informed her. "Will hasn't seen you since January. Emily hasn't seen you since Thursday morning. Stay home and we’ll-”

 

“I am aware of the last time I saw my daughter awake, Mulder,” she told him irritably. “I am aware some days you see her more than I do. Would you like to pay my rent and tuition?”

 

Mulder didn’t answer, but he stopped drying her hair. He draped the towel over the doorknob and stepped back. “Get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”

 

Dana looked at him like she bore the weight of the world on her shoulders. She massaged her temples and the bridge of her nose. “I’m sorry,” she said without looking up. “Thank you for watching Emily. And for waiting hours to pick me up. I didn’t mean for us to interrupt your time with William.”

 

He continued standing in her bedroom doorway. “You didn’t. And you’re welcome.”

 

She exhaled. “Have you ever thought of not being such a nice guy?”

 

“Mild-mannered chump is my daytime alter ego. I’m wearing blue tights and a cape beneath my clothes.” He paused. “Tights are very confining.”

 

Still in her slip, Dana lay down and gestured for him to join her. Mulder stretched out on her bed, doubled the blanket back over her, pulled her against him, and waited for her to stop shivering. The icy autumn rain outside might as well be sleet, and she felt like a Popsicle. A soft, musky, silky Popsicle.

 

He lay beside her with their arms and legs intertwined. He kissed her damp hair. Her head remained on his shoulder. He shouldn’t be in her apartment at night, and he certainly shouldn’t be in her bed. Mulder considered propriety, but not enough to propel his feet back to his own house. Will slept, Emily slept. The world would continue to turn if Mulder stayed with Dana a few more minutes.

 

He deserved a lifetime of nights with her. To make love, to tell secrets, to be close. Instead, he’d gotten a handful. Now, he stole time - worrying about her neighbors, watching the clock.

 

“Bad day?” he asked softly, sensing the answer.

 

Her head nodded. “Awful. Don’t go.”

 

“Since you twisted my arm,” he said. “Okay. We’ll be bad.”

 

She kissed his neck. Her breath felt hot and her lips left little sparks on his skin. “Thank you.”

 

Unbidden, memories flitted back: her lips beneath his lips, her body opening beneath his body. Watching her face, feeling her muscles tighten, hearing her cry out his name. Promising he’d marry her, keep her safe. Mulder willed those images away. Still, as the world slept, he remained beneath the blanket with her: the doll who broke his heart, who he wasn’t banging or marrying.

 

She shifted closer. Mulder kissed the crown of her head again. The rain drummed on the roof and the alarm clock on her nightstand ticked toward morning. Dana’s hand trailed down his chest, toying with the fabric of his shirt.

 

“Nice,” he murmured, and stroked her back. “I miss being with you. I wish-” But he asked instead, “What happened at the hospital?”

 

Instead of answering, her fingertips moved lower, stroking his abdomen. “Will you stay tonight?” she asked quietly. “It will be dawn soon. It barely even counts as night.”

 

“Don’t tempt me, Nurse Scully. I’m sober and I haven’t confiscated Will’s bubblegum; that’s all the willpower I have tonight.”

 

Beneath the blanket, in slow, light strokes, her fingers crossed his abdomen, moving progressively lower.

 

“What happened at work?” he repeated as she neared discovering exactly how much he missed her.

 

She didn’t answer. Or stop stroking.

 

“Dana-” Her hand reached the front of his trousers. He felt an instant surge in his groin, like a flood of warm champagne. “Jesus, honey.”

 

Instead of seeming embarrassed, she began to rub exactly as he’d shown her, months and months ago.

 

“That is the exact opposite of not tempting me,” he managed to say. “Dana, we agreed- Oh God.”

 

Mulder ran his hand up her thigh, tracing the stocking and garter to her backside. He felt her breasts pressed against him and the weight of her head against his neck. He caressed her bottom and ignored the increasingly insistent voice of reason. She won. He’d stay, play. Help her relax. Even make her climax, if she wanted. But not have sex. He wouldn’t be inside her. He wouldn’t even undress. He’d leave Dana and go home and take matters into his own hands. Hand.

 

He felt her open the smooth metal zipper of his trousers. Her cool hand slid beneath his boxer shorts, to his erection. Mulder gasped and cursed in an ungentlemanly manner. “What are you doing?”

 

“Oxford University and Manhattan’s Most Eligible Bachelor - and you don’t know what I’m doing, big guy?”

 

“Dana, we agreed,” he reminded her. “This is a bad idea.”

 

She pushed the blanket aside and maneuvered his shorts down over his erection. As he watched, she kissed the tip of his penis and wrapped her fingers around the shaft. Her hand moved: the right pressure, the right motion. “Just this once.”

 

“Fuck,” he repeated, and said, “Sorry,” apologizing for coarse language to a half-naked former fiancée with her hand around his cock. “Dana, this-” Her warm, wet tongue and lips engulfed the tip of his penis, and he momentarily lost the power of speech.

 

This was not happening. Nice girls didn’t do this. Not unless they were married - and often not then. Phoebe did this, but nice girls didn’t. And nice boys didn’t let them.

 

His breathing quickened as her hand continued to move. Strong, nimble fingers stroked as a wonderful tension built in his groin. Her hair felt silky as he ran his fingers through it. The rainstorm battered the roof, and electric waves spread from her mouth through Mulder’s entire being.

 

“Okay.” Mulder wasn’t sure which of them he addressed. He let his head fall back on the pillow and closed his eyes. His hand cupped the back of her head, and his hips moved instinctively, pushing deeper into her mouth. “Like that, honey,” he instructed. “With your lips tight.”

 

The little voice inside his head pointed out he shouldn’t have to instruct. Mulder focused on the hot, slick, tautness around his cock and ignored the voice of reason.

 

Her head slid down. He gasped again, and his fingers tightened against her crown. Mulder said another word he should apologize for, and grabbed one of the iron bars of her headboard. He felt the roughness of the back of her tongue twice, three times before her head jerked back.

 

Dana gagged and wretched. He pushed up on his elbow, but she held her hand up for Mulder not to touch her.

 

The pleasant pressure in his groin became as dark and miserable as the night outside. “I’m sorry. Dana, don’t- Don’t do this, honey.”

 

She started to lower her head again.

 

Mulder grabbed her wrist. “Stop. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

 

Her brows furrowed in an unhappy, defiant crease.

 

“You don’t,” he repeated flatly.

 

She moved as if to prove him wrong.

 

He caught her other hand. The old bed protested as he pushed her down on the mattress and, holding both her wrists with one hand, made her stay there. “Stop. What are you doing?” he demanded. “You’re acting like some baseball Annie.”

 

She glared up at him with her face flushed and her red lips wet and swollen. “I don’t know what that is.”

 

“It’s not you. I love you.”

 

The clock ticked, the wind battered the windows, and her blue eyes seemed bottomless.

 

“Love me,” She put her leg around his hips and drew him down on top of her. “Just tonight.”

 

“That is a bad idea,” he reiterated.

 

"Don't you want to be bad, Superman?" she said in a low, siren voice. “Shouldn’t we get to be bad? Just once?”

 

If Dana wanted to be bad, he possessed expertise in badness. He could be bad with pretty little Dana - bad enough to make her wish she hadn’t asked.

 

Mulder used his Oxford education to curse again before he kissed her so roughly his lips throbbed. He unfastened one stocking and her brassier but couldn't take her brassier off without letting go of her hands. Instead, he pushed the fabric aside, exposing one breast and drawing his thumb across her erect nipple. She shivered - not because she was cold.

 

He slid his hand beneath her slip again. Up her thigh, over the silky fabric of her stocking. Up her garter and to the warm patch of hair he felt through her panties.

 

Just once, he told himself. Just once, the way he used to say 'just one drink.'

 

"Don't go," she whispered into his ear, her breath hot and fast. "Please. I’m so sorry, Mulder."

 

He didn’t ask what she was sorry for. The bed creaked, and the rain beat mercilessly on the old windows and roof.

 

She got one hand free and slid it up his back, beneath his damp shirt and T-shirt, and down again. Her fingernails trailed down his ass. She raised her mouth to his, hungry and with a desperate edge, as if she encouraged him to hurt her. He wouldn’t hurt her, but he wasn't sure he didn't want to.

 

"Get this off," someone using his voice ordered as he let go of her other hand. He moved to take off his shirt and T-shirt while she pulled her slip and brassier over her head. That left a pair of white girdle panties with one white stocking still attached to the metal garters. He had those off in seconds, leaving her bare.

 

He saw fine lines in the skin over her hipbones, a network of dark little rivers. He ran his thumb over them. They weren't there in January. Nine months ago. When he’d shared his bed with her and promised to marry her and live happily ever after.

 

This was not happening.

 

The lamp beside her bed remained on. Her face flushed; her hair was still damp and tousled. Her bare breasts rose and fell with each breath.

 

This was not happening.

 

Her alarm clock ticked away the last of night.

 

Dana took his hand and drew him down on top of her, and he stopped listening to the clock and the rain. He pushed her legs wide apart and was inside her. Hard, insistent. Holding her down again. Making her cry out, arch her back, say his name. Talking to her: saying things a nice boy shouldn’t say. Making her admit things a nice girl shouldn’t.

 

She let him. She didn’t tell him to be gentle, or let her up, or pull out. Dana let him be bad. She encouraged him, in fact.

 

He still loved her.

 

She said she couldn't get pregnant, but if she did, maybe this time she'd marry him. She'd want him. She'd quit medical school and quit working and be with him and they'd be like everyone else. They’d be normal. She wouldn't leave him again. Or this time he'd save her. Mulder couldn't save his sister, but maybe he could save Dana.

 

He had so many wires crossed between his id and his super-ego he needed an electrician, not a shrink.

 

*~*~*~* 

 

Something warm and wonderful draped his bare back and hips, and Mulder nestled against it. Little things like whose bed he was in, who slept behind him, and what had happened to his shorts didn't concern him as much as having his backside toasty warm beneath the blanket.

 

Someone breathed cornflake breath in his face. He opened his eyes lazily to see what it might be. He blinked at the morning sun streaming through Dana's bedroom window. Her alarm clock read six-forty.

 

Mulder raised his head.

 

Dana’s alarm clock read six-forty.

 

Emily greeted him with a frown. The little girl offered a handful of the dry cereal she ate directly from the box while she watched Mulder and Dana sleep in bed together.

 

He pulled the blanket higher. "No, thank you," that mysterious person who kept using his voice said politely. His hand reached back to shake Dana awake.

 

"Ump, um? Dilated six centimeters," she muttered. She stretched and yawned, grimaced, and relaxed. "Don't push," she added.

 

"We have company, Dana," Mulder said, trying to sound casual.

 

"Did you sleep with my Mommy?" Em asked. Mulder gaped for a few seconds before she added, "I'm too big to sleep with Mommy now. I have my own bed. Don't you have your own bed, Mulder?"

 

"Mulder put Mommy to bed last night and fell asleep here, like Mommy does in your bed, sometimes," Dana said, in time to save him from utter humiliation. "It was an accident. Mulder has his own bed, like you do."

 

"Where are your clothes, Mulder?" the little girl wanted to know.

 

He glanced around. "On the floor."

 

"That's not where clothes belong," Em informed him, sounding like her mother.

 

"I'll pick them up," he assured her.

 

Emily wandered off, crunching happily. As soon as she left the bedroom, Mulder reached over and closed the door. He sank onto the pillow, his heart pounding. He stared at the water-stained ceiling as he tried to determine the proper thing to say in this situation. "I must have fallen asleep."

 

"Get dressed before she comes back," Dana suggested neutrally.

 

Mulder nodded. He sat up and grabbed his shorts and trousers off the floor. His hair looked slightly more out of place than usual. He rinsed his mouth and face in her bathroom, trying to make himself presentable. He braced his hands on the sink and studied himself in the mirror, wondering what came next.

 

His reflection looked awkward and ashamed, which wasn't helpful.

 

He laid Dana’s slip across the bottom of the bed where she could reach it. He jerked his still-damp shirt and T-shirt over his head. He looked around for his shoes and socks. "I can't do anything about the neighbors seeing me but with any luck, Will should sleep until noon."

 

She didn’t respond.

 

"Dana, I'm sorry." He stood beside her bed. "I can't believe I did that." He didn't mean falling asleep; he meant the surreal predawn series of events preceding his falling asleep. Calling it passionate was an understatement. Calling it orgasmic was true. But calling it polite lovemaking constituted an outright lie.

 

"We did that," Dana reminded him quietly. 

 

"Yes."

 

She looked past him momentarily and reached out her hand for his. "It's okay." She closed her eyes again. "I'm okay," she added, answering his unspoken question.

 

He sat down on the bed, still holding her hand. It didn't seem worth going through his 'we-shouldn't-be-doing-this-unless-we're-married' speech. Repeating 'I'm sorry' was insulting. He hadn't acted alone. It was rough and carnal and dangerous - the kind of love that left marks. Not the way nice Irish-Catholic girls and nice Jewish boys proved they love each other. Now Dana wouldn't look at him.

 

"You're angry," she said softly.

 

"I don't know what I am," he said honestly. “I’m not happy.”

 

After a few seconds, she let go of his hand and rolled away. The late September sun made her tousled hair glisten. Her foot slipped from beneath the blanket. Mulder ran his hand over it and up her leg as he leaned down to kiss her cheek.

 

"Dana-" he said, but she didn't answer him.

 

The alarm clock ticked loudly.

 

He stood up, unsure what to do except leave. "Do you want me to take Emily home with me so you can sleep?" he offered. “Feed her something?”

 

"No," she said quietly, neutrally, "I'll get up. You should go before Will wakes up, too."

 

So he did.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder loved William's mother. Not the way he should have, but in some way. He'd loved her vicariously, out of duty and because of Will. Want and love didn’t always coincide, but Phoebe was beautiful and exciting, and they were young, drunken fools. Mulder had been so drunk he had humiliatingly little recollection of that first night. He did the right thing and thought the baby would make things better, once it came. Even after Phoebe left, Mulder thought he could make her happy and they could work it out because nice people worked it out. He could make her want him - not just want to go to bed with him. Phoebe would change her mind if Mulder tried hard enough, made money enough, explained enough, apologized enough. Despite everything, he hadn't wanted the divorce; he wanted a family.

 

During the war, he did and saw things to give Dana's nightmares a run for their money. Mulder understood feeling numb. He understood wanting desperately to feel alive - to forget the person he’d become and connect with another person however he could. Mulder spoke French, he could hold his liquor, and he had his own baseball card. Paying Phoebe back for cheating wasn't difficult. Once the Allies marched into Germany, Mulder spoke German, too.

 

After the divorce, after the war, after Phoebe and Will moved to New York, Phoebe used to drop by Mulder’s old apartment, have a few drinks, and want to play the 'let's pretend we're still married' game. Mulder let her because he’d wanted to pretend too.

 

There were women after he stopped playing ball - all tall, pretty, dark-eyed brunettes who thought he was an all-American hero. Women who thought he could save them. There were more women after Dana returned. Mulder fell off the wagon and landed on a series of girls who reminded him of Dana. Petite, fair-skinned, blue-eyed women. Naive. Quietly, elegantly beautiful rather than showy. Then Diana. Diana was self-flagellation with legs for miles.

 

Mulder had been with women for a lot of wrong reasons. But never Dana Scully. She wasn't his first love - or the first woman he'd made love to - but Mulder wanted her to be the last.

 

*~*~*~*

 

For once Lady Luck sided with Mulder. William slept until ten, got up, shuffled to the bathroom, and went back to bed until noon. Mulder spent the day worrying the morning's events like a dog with a bone, replaying what happened and trying to decide what to say to Dana. In the end, his son made the decision for him. Will wanted a driving lesson, which precluded Mulder from picking Dana up after her shift at the hospital. By the time he and Will returned home - with a stack of new records, five comic books, two milkshakes, and three teenage girls’ telephone numbers - the moon rose and the lights glowed in Dana's apartment. Emily flashed her flashlight and Will flashed back, but the Scully ladies did not appear. Mulder had to call and invite them over. “Will wants to see you before he leaves in the morning,” Mulder lied, and mailed off his application for Worst Father of the Decade.

 

Mulder got a kiss from Emily, but not from Dana. Dana smiled at Will, but didn't meet Mulder's eyes, and she kept Emily within arm's reach.

 

William interrupted his telephone conversation and looked up from his comic book long enough to say crisply, "Hello, Miss Scully," and ignored them until Emily dropped the Scrabble game on his stomach and said he was on Mulder's team. Boys versus girls. With Emily dragging him by the hand, Will came to the table like he faced a hypodermic needle instead of popcorn and a board game.

 

William seemed skittish but polite, and looked to Mulder for guidance before he spoke. He answered Dana's questions about his school and his baseball team and, thawing, asked her about Emily's illness. So far, he hadn't demanded angrily, “What did you do to my father?” So far, neither had Mulder.

 

Mulder and Dana cautiously discussed nothing, but Mulder felt the tautness and the electricity between them. The kids chattered and the air crackled as the grown-ups played their roles. He waited for some clue from her, some guidance. Usually he could read people but tonight he couldn't tell if Dana felt insulted or embarrassed or sorry or all three at once. He was sore; she had to be sore. Regardless, Mulder knew if not for Emily’s and Will’s presence, Dana would leave to avoid talking to Mulder. Or start taking off his clothing - for the same reason.

 

"I don't think that's a word, Will," Mulder heard Dana's voice say. Mulder glanced up, returning his attention to the present.

 

Dana looked at Mulder as if wanting to know whether to insist Will follow the rules or not. William mixed up letters, sometimes. In private, he might ask for help, but he didn't like having his mistakes pointed out in front of people.

 

"That's not a word," Emily agreed, having recently mastered her ABC’s.

 

"It is." Will pushed the tiles into a straighter line, looking proud of himself. "Reticulan: something from Zeta Reticuli. R-E-T-I-C-U-L-A-N.  Where space aliens come from, right, Daddy-O?"

 

Mulder nodded.

 

"It's not a real word," Dana repeated. "If it's not in the dictionary, it doesn't count. I'll give you 'Reticuli' because it's a star, but not 'Reticulan.'"

 

Will narrowed his eyes. "These are the colonies - let's vote on it. Who thinks 'Reticulan' is a word?"

 

Mulder and Will raised their hands in unison, and Emily, unfamiliar with democracy but a champion Simon Says player, concurred. Dana sighed and added Will's score to her tally for 'Boys'.

 

"It balances against you not letting me count 'rock-and-roll.'" Will fished the last kernels out of the popcorn bowl. "I can't help what's in the dictionary or that the game doesn't come with dashes."

 

Mulder gave him a stern look. 'Rock and roll' had an entirely different meaning a generation ago. Perhaps Mulder was old-fashioned, but he didn't like Will using the phrase in mixed company. They'd discussed this.

 

Will gave his father an impish, taunting grin.

 

"You two cheat like crazy," Dana decided. She stood up and rolled her shoulders tiredly. "And you get my tiles all buttery. I'm taking my game and going home."

 

"I'll make more popcorn if you stay," Mulder offered quickly. He picked up the bowl and purposely told rather than asked her, "Come help me, Dana."

 

She looked puzzled, but followed him into the kitchen, leaving Emily and Will at the dining room table. Mulder noticed Will watching them.

 

"What do you need help with, Mulder?" Dana asked neutrally as the kitchen door swung closed. “I just saw you make popcorn.”

 

"Nothing. And everything. I want to talk to you," he said casually. He picked her up and set her on the kitchen counter so they were face to face. He put his hands on the tiles on either side of her hips. "Alone," he added, and kissed her lightly. He tasted traces of salt and melted butter.

 

"What is it you want to talk about?" Her voice sounded casual, but her body looked tense.

 

He kissed her again, less chastely, and she pulled back. "The children..." she reminded him.

 

He looked at her steadily as he ran his tongue over lips. There were children last night: one asleep in the next room and one across the alley. They hadn't even thought to close her bedroom door or turn off the light. Hell, Mulder was surprised they didn't wake the neighbors, let alone the children.

 

"What is it, Mulder? What do you want?"

 

"Popcorn, Dana," he said softly, after a pause. "I never want any until I smell it, but my mouth starts to water and I can't think of anything I want more."

 

She shook her head as if puzzled. "Make more popcorn." 

 

"You're the same way," he continued. "You're beautiful. I do notice. I never stopped wanting you, but we decided - you and I decided... Not to. I do a good job of staying on my best behavior until you're in my arms, offering..." He trailed off. "Emily said her Aunt Tara's baby came yesterday. Bill's wife had her baby."  

 

"I didn't tell you? A little boy. Matthew. Tara checked into the hospital yesterday."

 

"You came home and went to bed with me." He kept his voice soft. "Your sister-in-law’s baby comes, and you decided we needed to become lovers again." He paused. "This morning... What happened, Dana?"

 

Her expression rivaled a blank chalkboard. "You were there. I don't understand what you're asking."

 

"Yes, you do. I didn't instigate that. I want to know what you wanted, because I don't think it was to make love to me. Not really, and not like that. Whatever you wanted, I was-" He hunted for the right word. "Coincident."

 

"What makes you think that?"

 

"I was there, and I'm not a fool. I don't like being coincident. Not to you."

 

She studied the back of the kitchen door while she didn't answer.

 

"What did you want, Dana?" he asked, still in the same calm tone, despite the boiling mix of emotions inside him. "To forget? To feel something?"

 

"What is it you want me to say, Mulder? 'I was tired and I wasn't thinking'? 'I'm sorry I let you do that'?"

 

His stomach pitched but he asked coolly, "Are you?"

 

She looked away. His kitchen faucet dripped loudly. "I don't know," she answered.

 

Dead reckoning, he kept repeating to himself. Mistakes are cumulative.

 

"If you want to go to bed with me, I'd be honored,” he told her. “I pay lip service to morality and consequences but the truth is, with you: however, whenever you want, as long as it's honest and it's you and me. I'd risk everything to be with you. Not just to make love, but if you ever needed me, I'd be there - whatever you wanted, whatever the cost, no questions asked."

 

She nodded.

 

"If I’m a chump, I don’t care. I've never been sorry with you, not matter what," he said. "But if you just want to go to bed with someone- If you want to be bad with someone, be bad with someone else, because I can't do that with you. Not and look at myself in the mirror the next day. You aren't just someone to me." He added in a rough voice, "Don't you know I love you?"

 

"I know," she said softly. She added unsteadily, "You're not just someone to me, either."

 

A few seconds of silence passed before he worked up the nerve to ask, "Do you want another baby? Even though the doctor said..."

 

She stared deep into his eyes as though she saw something no one else did. As Mulder stared back, she bit her lower lip. Her chin started to quiver.

 

"It's okay." He put his arms around her. "Hush. It's okay. Whatever you want." Jesus Christ, he didn't know how he'd explain that to William or the judge, though.

 

"I'm sorry," she told his shoulder hoarsely. "I don't know. I don't know what I wanted. I was tired and angry and afraid and I didn't want to think anymore."

 

"I know." He understood more than she could fathom.

 

"I miss you."

 

He kissed the top of her head. "I miss you, too."

 

"It used to be so nice, being with you. Having you there."

 

"I can still be there."

 

She took a ragged breath and looked at him uncertainly.

 

"Dana, I can be there. I can come over tonight after Will goes to sleep. I'll be on my best behavior, and be gone long before you and Emily wake up. We're not doing anything wrong and no one's the wiser." As he said it, his logic seemed sensible. "Okay?" he asked. "You sleep; I'll keep watch for the bad guys. No one's going to get past me again. I promise. Is that a plan?"

 

"Okay," she agreed.

 

He stepped back, cleared his throat, and helped her slide down from the counter. She put her hand on his chest, and he leaned down so she could kiss him softly.

 

"If that plan changes, you let me know, though. However, whenever you want. I'd be honored." he said.

 

"Mulder," she said urgently as he turned to go to the living room.

 

He whirled around, going back to her. This morning might have been a mistake, but the most memorable, passionate mistake he ever made.

 

"You forgot to make more popcorn," Dana reminded him.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder had a key to Dana’s apartment but she’d left the door unlocked. The light in the hallway remained on, and a place for Mulder remained beside Dana in her bed. She opened her eyes. Mulder toed off his shoes, pushed her bedroom door closed and, laying on top of the covers with her beneath them, curled up to her warm back.

 

He let himself kiss the curve of her ear and a place behind it on her neck.

 

"Sorry it's so late,” he whispered to her. “Will's found a new 'dish' to telephone in Alexandria. I think it's the 'dish' responsible for the hickey on his neck. If she was my daughter, I'd make her get off the telephone before midnight."

 

"Sure you would,” Dana whispered back. “'Rules' is your middle name."

 

"Technically, 'William' is my middle name."

 

"True. Is she 'cool?'?"

 

"No, she's 'hot,' but I'm not sure what the difference is. He's meeting her for sodas tomorrow before he 'blows' Georgetown for New York.” He stoked her hip. “She's a 'hot dish' - which I thought was a tuna casserole - but me seeing you is 'cool.'" Mulder clicked his tongue against his teeth, imitating Will's omnipresent bubblegum and the British accent as he said, "And you're 'the most.'"

 

Her shoulders jiggled as she laughed quietly. "The most financially broke? The most sleep-deprived? The most what?"

 

"I'm still unclear on that," he confessed, toying with her hair. "I think, so is he. But we agree you are. So, doll, I got wheels," Mulder said in his steel-jawed gangster impression. "You wanna blow this square joint and find some hot dive where the cool scene hangs out?"

 

"I have no idea what you said."

 

"Maybe it's 'a cool dive where the hot scene hangs out.'"

 

"I want to stay here." She laced her fingers through his. “With you. Forever,” she added so softly he barely heard.

 

The bed creaked as he shifted closer to her. “Sleep.”

 

*~*~*~*

 

Autumn arrived early and in full force, chilling the air and painting the trees scarlet and orange and burnt umber, according the radio. William spent a few games warming the bench before he gave up baseball to pursue girls and cultivating the perfect hairstyle. With four separate girls doing his homework, he made fair grades with no effort and bemoaned the lack of a shop class at Packer. Emily had ice skating lessons, and showed Mulder her newest trick on his hardwood floors in her sock feet, if he wasn't in town for her lesson. The rug got rolled up and solo skating performances staged were in his living room on Sunday afternoons. He had the maid wax the floors so slick, if shoeless, Mulder regularly failed to make the turn in the foyer and went slip-sliding into the fish tank.

 

Dana did well in medical school, continued working at the hospital emergency room, and slept when she could. Mulder had the flight schedules between New York and Washington, D.C. memorized, and Will often flew with him. The apartment at The Plaza went unused for weeks, both of them preferring the house in Georgetown.

 

Mulder noticed curious faces peering behind the neighbors’ curtains. He saw peoples’ expressions if he showed up at Emily’s skating lessons. One of Dana’s professors turned his head as Mulder drove past with Dana in the passenger seat one day; after that, Mulder picked Dana up a block from campus.

 

One Friday evening, after Mulder picked William up at the D.C. airport, Will produced a wrinkled shirt from his backpack. He handed it forward to Dana, telling her a button fell off the collar and the cuff came apart. He still wore his school clothes from earlier in the day, meaning he brought the dirty shirt from Manhattan. Mulder glanced in the rear view mirror at Will as Dana studied the white oxford shirt. Phoebe had a housekeeper and a dry cleaner, and New York City had a few thousand tailors, but Will brought his shirt to Dana.

 

"Can you mend it?" William leaned forward and looked over the seat. "It's my lucky shirt."

 

"I can." Dana looked at the shirt again and asked, "Do you want the lipstick and bloodstains off the collar, too? Or is that the 'lucky' part?"

 

"The luck predates the stains, but I fancy them. They're a red badge of courage," he assured her.

 

"Unless you were in the Battle of the Cosmetics Counter, that's not what the book was about, Will," Mulder said, but was ignored.

 

"A girl with braces?" Dana glanced back at his son.

 

William nodded.

 

"Is she still your girlfriend?"

 

The boy shook his head. "Not since Wednesday."

 

"The shirt might be luckier for you in the future without your old girlfriend's lipstick and blood on it," she suggested.

 

"Fine," Will conceded.

 

Mulder chuckled as he drove them home. The shirt got mended, washed, starched, ironed, and hung in Will's closet by Sunday morning, stain-free and ready for him to take back to Manhattan and try his luck the following week.

 

One weekend, they drove to the Shenandoah Mountains and bought the biggest pumpkin they could find for Emily. They stopped at a farm stand that sold Dana mulled wine and everyone else hot apple cider, with pumpkin muffins all around. Mulder kissed her, and they tasted like fall.

 

They drove home slowly on Skyline Drive, listening to the radio and looking out at the mountains and the sleepy little valleys far below. They rolled the windows down. Dana tied a white scarf over her head and let the wind play through her fingers. By the time they reached the outskirts of Georgetown, Emily slept holding her pumpkin and Will slept holding Em. The next day, William and Mulder helped Emily carve her pumpkin while Nurse Scully stood watch with her medical kit. No one got injured except Mr. Pumpkin.

 

Emily wanted a costume the included her denim overalls, so she trick-or-treated as a cowgirl and drafted Will as her chaperone/horsey. When Dana asked him jokingly if he was dressing up, William turned up the collar on his leather jacket, combed back his hair, and told her he was going as Adonis. Dana laughed and kissed Will’s cheek; she had to tiptoe.

 

Mulder and Dana sat on his front steps, guarding Mr. Pumpkin, keeping an eye on Will and Emily as they made their rounds, and giving out treats. 

 

"It's been a year," Mulder told her during a lull in pint-sized cowboys, soldiers, princesses, and ballerinas. "One year ago tonight, I walked into the Mercy ER holding a bloody towel to my head."

 

"Is that all?" Dana snuggled deep into her sweater against the cold night.

 

"Three-hundred and sixty-five days. Fifty-three Saturdays."

 

"How do you get so many Saturdays?"

 

"I'm counting the first one and this one," he explained.

 

"That seems like cheating," she said.

 

"I'll take what I can get."

 

Dana took his hand. The new moon glistened silver in the sky and the breeze blew the damp autumn leaves along the sidewalk.

 

Will returned with Emily on his shoulders, a pillowcase full of candy in his hand, and a teenage girl in a tight sweater in tow.

 

"It's too late for treats." Mulder made the 'turn around' gesture with his finger. "Walk her home."

 

Will looked crestfallen. He lowered Emily to the ground and sadly, silently outlined a square in the air, indicating his opinion of Mulder’s request.

 

"Be back in five minutes," Mulder added.

 

Disappointed, Will and the girl disappeared back into the darkness.  Emily sat between Mulder and Dana on the steps showing them her loot. The trick-or-treaters slowed to a trickle and, after a few minutes, Dana took Emily back to their apartment to get ready for bed. Mulder would follow once Emily - and Will, if he was there - was asleep. Mulder would stay until Dana was asleep and slip quietly as a cat across the alley to his house. 

 

He stood up, stretching and watching for William. Ten minutes later, Will ambled up the walk, hands in his coat pockets. "I may have met the love of my week," his son informed him.

 

"How wonderful. Were you smoking, son?" Mulder didn’t smell cigarette smoke on Will, but he smelled it somewhere. "Was she?"

 

"No. Well, you don't mean marijuana cigarettes, do you? May I have a motorbike for my birthday? There's a motorcycle reefer gang I'm keen on."

 

"Go inside, put on your chastity belt, and stop tormenting your loving father, William." Mulder opened the front door. 

 

As he stood in the doorway with his hand on the push-button switch to turn off the porch light, Mulder saw him. An old man in a dark, well-cut suit stood under the streetlamp and smoked a cigarette as he watched them. The same man interrupted Mulder and Dana at dinner months and months ago. The smoking man who called Dana 'Miss Scully' rather than 'Mrs.' The same man they saw in December, across from Bergdorf Goodman, staring at them like merchandise for sale. The man watched Mulder. He took a slow drag from his cigarette and exhaled evil.

 

He radiated evil. Mulder felt it.

 

The law didn’t forbid standing on a public sidewalk. Unsettled but unsure what else to do, Mulder closed and locked the stout front door. He looked through the glass a second later. The smoking man was gone.

 

He didn't tell Dana.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder loved how Nurse Scully looked for his car as she left the hospital before she started walking home after work. Statistically, Mulder was unlikely to be waiting, but she still checked. Because of that, he'd been known to occasionally drive five hours to chauffeur her a mile and a half to her apartment.

 

Dana smiled as Mulder got out, walked around the car, and opened the passenger door for her. "Are you new in town, sailor?" she asked him.

 

"My ship came in this morning," he responded, sliding behind the wheel.

 

She leaned over and kissed his cheek. "Thank you for the lift."

 

"You are welcome, beautiful. Good day?"

 

"Not too bad. Is it possible you're on the cover of Look magazine, Mulder? I saw the new issue in the nurses’ lounge."

 

"It is possible," he conceded. "I was on the cover last September, too."

 

"It's a nice picture. I didn't know you were in the Baseball Hall of Fame."

 

"Most Valuable Player three times over. Now I am but a humble chauffeur with an extraordinary batting and fielding record."

 

Dana looked him up and down. She took in his blue jeans, tattered gray flannel shirt, and a pair of old sneakers handed down from Will. Mulder had bandage across the back of his left hand and a stubborn smear of something greenish-black on his right wrist. He'd run late leaving the house to pick her up, so his attempt at cleaning up was hurried.

 

"Surreal," she commented.

 

"I will give you three guesses where I was today," he said as he pulled away from the hospital.

 

"With you, the possibilities are endless." She scrutinized him again. "I'm going to need a clue, but I'm sure a wrench or screwdriver was involved."

 

He didn’t wait for her to guess. "The FBI," he announced. "I flew down and met with Agent Dales this morning. Agent Dales left a pass for me at the desk.” He spoke faster. “I put it on and walked into the FBI. Agent Dales said he'd talk to his assistant director about getting me security clearance so I have access to their cases."

 

"That's wonderful."

 

He adjusted his hands on the steering wheel and grinned so broadly his jaw ached. "We're going to be Doctors Mulder and Scully. If you can't save them, I can figure out who murdered them."

 

"I don't think we should put that on our business cards, Mulder. Did Agent Dales appreciate this spiffy outfit?"

 

"I wore a suit," he insisted haughtily. "Flush with success, I came home, changed clothes, and worked on the kitchen sink. Then I came to get you."

 

"Your meeting with Agent Dales must have gone well." She reached over, toying with his cuff. "I could fix those holes and get out those stains."

 

"Don't alter my shirt's character, Nurse Scully. This is my lucky dissertation-writing, sink-fixing, pumpkin-carving shirt."

 

She smiled enigmatically. "You didn't fix the sink, did you?"

 

Mulder slowed the car to make the tight turn into the alley that ran between the back of his house and her apartment. "I'll be taking you and Emily out to dinner. It seems my shirt's luck is intermittent, and there's been a natural disaster in my kitchen."

 

"I adore you," she told him.

 

As the day settled in to a soft November evening, he felt that old, orange glow growing warm in his belly. Be it healing or forgiveness or hope, it was real. 

 

"Don't you ever leave me again," he said impulsively, but wished he hadn't.

 

"I'll do my best," she responded without missing a beat.

 

As he turned into the driveway and parked the car, Emily's babysitter stood on the back porch of Dana's building, holding Emily and watching anxiously for Dana.

 

*~*~*~*

 

In the interest of peace, Phoebe had visited during the day and Mulder took the night shift at the hospital when Will had his tonsils out a few years ago. William had been frightened, disoriented, and uncomfortable the first night, but the nurses gave him something for pain and he slept fitfully. By the next evening, William ate crushed ice, Popsicles, and ice cream. Worried he couldn't call out, Will woke several times during the second night to make sure his father still sat with him. It wasn't a pleasant experience, but it hadn't been terrifying, either.

 

Dana didn’t have to tell Mulder this was a different ball game. He smelled sickness on Emily. Dana tried to cajole Em to eat ice or sip juice, with little success. Between coughing fits, the little girl looked at them dully. The doctor would see her first thing the next morning, but a night with a sick child lasted an eternity. 

 

Dana was up and down during the night, absent from her bed more than she was present. Mulder stopped waiting in her apartment until Dana fell asleep - because that wouldn’t happen; he waited for dawn so they could leave for the doctor's office.

 

Around four, Mulder slipped across the borderland to sleep for a few minutes. He still wore his street clothes, and listened to Emily coughing in the next room.

 

In his dream, he was thirty-years-old. He wore Army green and carried a rifle that felt natural in his hands. The company he commanded was ten miles northwest of Munich, Germany, marching toward what was labeled an old munitions factory on the Allied map. His men covered the signalmen - John Byers' mobile communications unit - while they established a radio channel from the factory. They hadn’t found a munitions factory, though; they found a death camp, like Auschwitz. A white flag flew from the guard tower. The Third Reich crumbled and, as the American soldiers approached, the Nazi soldiers surrendered.

 

It was April, 1945. Mulder’s wedding band remained on his ring finger, and his dog tags jangled as he moved.

 

They fanned out, searching the camp, holding rifles at the ready. In the claustrophobic prisoners' barracks they found rows of bunk beds stacked three high. A huge medical clinic was filled with operating tables and obstetrics tables; all had restraints rivaling the old insane asylums. The soldiers found a kitchen, a gas chamber, a crematorium, a modern but destroyed laboratory, and a building they realized had been a brothel. They found soldier's quarters, officer's quarters, and an empty courtyard, but no prisoners. In the far barrack, Mulder’s and Byers’ men discovered piles upon piles of women’s eyeglasses, shoes, jewelry, suitcases, even dentures and artificial limbs - personal affects taken from hundreds of thousands of people. The number of carefully sorted items was incomprehensible. But still no prisoners. 

 

Mulder didn't just smell death in the camp, he felt death the way people said they sensed a ghost. The sensation surrounded him: a rolling fog of terror and sadness and despair. The camp smelled like rotten pork but a thousand times denser. They were seasoned soldiers, accustomed to death, but Mulder’s men coughed and retched as they struggled not to vomit.

 

Mulder put his rifle to a German guard's head and demanded, "Wo sind die Leute? Wo sind die Gefangenen?" The Nazi soldiers protested in German they didn't know. "Die Juden!" Mulder barked. Where were the Jews.

 

The guards continued to plead ignorance, but the hair on the back of Mulder's neck started to prickle. He felt a tug at the base of his brain. He looked past the guards they'd rounded up and at the long train of boxcars on the tracks behind the camp. He just knew.

 

"They're in the boxcars, Byers.” He turned and commanded his soldiers, “Open the boxcars."

 

As the young GI’s hurried toward the train, Mulder felt like he drifted above his body.

 

Byers gave the order to his men as well. Within a minute the men cut the lock, unlatched the first of the boxcars, and threw the huge doors open. As the gangplank banged down, the German guard dogs barked hysterically.

 

A dozen bodies tumbled out of the car: gaunt, Jewish women - many pregnant - their corpses stiff and their faces contorted in horror. The train of cars stretched to the horizon. The Nazis must have herded the women into the train cars weeks ago, locked them in, and left them to die.

 

Some of the GI's stood frozen, or shielded their faces, or started to cry silently, still holding their rifles at the ready. Both units had seen D-Day and a hundred other skirmishes. Death - even senseless death - was an everyday occurrence. They'd forgotten the men they were stateside and become warriors, but this wasn't war. This was cruelty on a scale their minds couldn't comprehend.

 

Mulder reached in his pocket. He found a pack of cigarettes, and lit one. In his dream, he saw the tip glowing red and orange.

 

A trio of his men had a second boxcar open, and soon a third car, searching for survivors. Behind him, Mulder heard Byers losing his breakfast, then curse and cough. John Byers did not curse. Byers did not smoke, he did not drink to excess, and he did not fool around. But Byers' new wife, a blonde Polish Jew, was a few months gone. Twins, Byers had said the doctor speculated.

 

Mulder saw a shock of blonde hair among the bodies. His cousin Ayla was blonde, too. Pretty. And missing - relocated along with her mother and grandmother by the German government.

 

Mulder looked at the dingy cinder-block brothel, and at the piles of starved bodies as more boxcars opened. All were women, all were dead, and almost all looked pregnant. He saw no dead Jewish men in the train cars or any sign of male prisoners in the camp. The prisoners’ bathrooms held no urinals, and none of the piles included men’s clothing or belongings. The only men in the camp were the Nazi soldiers Mulder and Byers had lined up in the courtyard.

 

"Shoot them," his hind-brain ordered.

 

Mulder pulled the trigger. Again, and again, and again. He heard Byers firing as well. The guards' bodies hit the dirt with dull, wet thuds. Blood spattered like paint and spread in scarlet pools. The dogs continued barking over the rifle fire. Mulder turned. The guard dogs yelped and were quiet.

 

The entire camp was quiet.

 

Mulder lit another cigarette for himself. He offered the last one in the pack to Byers, and Byers took it. That night, they reached HQ. He and Byers would get drunk on German brandy and, except in the vaguest terms, never speak of that day again.

 

Mulder opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling over Dana’s bed. The coughing had stopped. The clock on Dana's nightstand read four thirty-five. Dana slept beside him wearing her robe over her pajamas. He lay still for a moment, listening. He heard nothing amiss, but the feeling of wrongness, of pervasive danger, remained.

 

As soon as he moved, Dana moved with him, rushing to Emily’s bedroom. Dana touched the girl’s forehead. “Oh, my God.”

 

“What’s wrong with her?”

 

“She’s burning up.” Dana threw back the blankets and stripped off Emily's pajamas. The girl's face flushed even though she shivered. Dana got a wet washcloth. She wiped off her daughter's face and throat. Emily’s teeth chattered.

 

“Aspirin?” Mulder offered. “An icepack?”

 

"No, we need to go, Mulder," Dana said. "She needs to be in a hospital."

 

He picked Emily up, and her skin felt like fire. Something about her breathing wasn't right. Dana had a pair of slacks on before they reached her front door, and had a sweater over her pajama top by the time they reached Mulder’s driveway. 

 

"I checked on her ten minutes ago," Dana said, hurriedly sliding into the passenger seat of his car. Mulder put Emily on her lap and draped a blanket around the girl. "How did you know her fever was so high?"

 

"I'm not sure," Mulder told her, starting the car. "I just did."

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder bought a cup of coffee out of the machine in the lobby of the hospital, and took the paper cup with him into the wooden phone booth in the corner. He closed the folding glass door, deposited the coins, and dialed Melvin Frohike's home number. At eleven-thirty at night, Frohike answered on the first ring.

 

"It's Mulder." He paused to take a sip. The instant coffee tasted bitter, and the fake powdered cream didn't improve it. "I'm not going to be there in the morning."

 

"I was thinking about you. Where are you?"

 

"D.C. Emily's in the hospital. She has pneumonia."

 

"What? Is she okay?" Frohike asked anxiously.

 

"She's as okay as any four-year-old can be with pneumonia." Mulder rubbed his cheek tiredly, scratching the stubble. "Her fever is down and the doctor has her on antibiotics and IV fluids. They're saying she can go home tomorrow evening." Mulder paused again. "I want to stay with Dana tonight."

 

"How is Dana?"

 

"She's not okay. I'm going to take her home, get her to sleep for a few hours. I may not be back in New York this week."

 

"It's not a problem, Mulder. We'll reschedule the interview and photos."

 

Mulder took another sip of coffee and the flavor started to improve. He cradled the phone against his shoulder, took a small glass pill bottle from his pocket, and squinted at it. Either he was getting old or type was shrinking, but he couldn't read the label. "I need another favor."

 

"Name it."

 

"Will. I'm supposed to pick him up after school tomorrow, and I can't. Rescue him. Do something nice with him this weekend. I don't know what he did to get on her bad side, but Phoebe won't let up on him. I've tried to talk to her-"

 

"It's not Will. Phoebe isn't feeling well." Frohike lowered his voice, as if anyone listened. "The bunny has breathed his last. She has an after-hours appointment with the doctor next week."

 

Mulder spoke more quietly as well. "How do you know? Did she call you?"

 

Wisely, Frohike didn't answer.

 

"Again? By who?"

 

"I knew it wasn't you. Beyond that, it's not my business."

 

"Jesus," Mulder said distastefully. He scuffed the toe of his loafer against the inside of the booth. That didn't mean Frohike didn't know the father; it meant he wouldn’t tell Mulder. "Do you think Will knows?"

 

"The boy doesn't miss much."

 

"Get him out of there," Mulder requested.

 

"Consider it done."

 

"I owe you."

 

"You do," Frohike agreed. "Take care of those lovely Scully ladies."

 

"I'll do my best," Mulder promised.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Psychogenic amnesia: the mind's attempt at self-preservation by forgetting a trauma. Mulder saw it at Oxford and again during the war. Something so awful and shameful happened that, in order to stay alive, the mind decided it never happened. Or something else happened.

 

Aside from being gorgeous, Dana was reserved in a way that made a rapist's mouth water. She wouldn't have been the only Army nurse forced by a soldier or two. Sex and violence bordered in the male mind anyway; a thin line separated instinctively aggressive passion and outright force. Kill enough enemy soldiers, forget the man you were stateside, and the line started to fade. Mulder saw rape happen with French and especially German women, and the Army did little about it. The military viewed those women as causalities of war. If people couldn't let themselves remember the human monsters who hurt them, their minds invented government monsters and convenient conspiracies.

 

In the months before Mulder met Dana, she worked nights at the Mercy ER with a narcissistic ass of a young doctor. A previous rape made amnesia of a second rape more likely. Dana truly didn't remember, and didn't know what to tell Mulder when she figured out she was pregnant in January. Or the twins had been Mulder’s, but she wasn't certain. What followed was a psychogenic fugue: a loss of memory for a person's entire identity, lasting weeks or months. The ending, in April, was tragic.

 

Mulder could work it out nicely in his mind, if he didn't think too hard. He could tell himself what to believe, maintain his view of the world, and move on.

 

But the government shouldn't keep a list of women he'd slept with.

 

But Dana's nightmares didn’t involve rape. She dreamed about medical experiments “in my belly” and someone trying to take Emily. Dana wasn’t frigid or traumatized; she was naive. Unfortunately for Mulder and his resolve, Dana possessed a healthy libido, an adventurous spirit, anatomy textbooks, and a preternatural ability to learn.

 

Mulder assumed his mother was a war bride but, thinking back, he couldn't remember ever seeing his parents' wedding pictures or hearing how they met. Or even hearing about his father's WWI service. The eugenics movement boomed in the teens and 1920’a, both in the US and Germany. Thinking back, Mulder couldn't remember his father's State Department job title, specifically.

 

When Mulder was thirteen and Samantha was nine, Samantha vanished. She didn't run away or fall into the ocean; Mulder turned his back in the woods and she disappeared. The police held a search and an investigation, but to his parents, Sam was lost from the moment she'd vanished.

 

Mulder knew the Nazis did experiments involving pregnant women, and most of the doctors who did those experiments were never caught. Mulder knew sometimes, he just knew things.

 

He knew Emily wouldn’t die. Not that night, not that winter. He knew Dana loved him, and she needed to sleep before she started to crack. He knew the shadows had eyes, watching them. He knew Dana soothed his soul like a hand smoothing wrinkles from fresh sheets. He knew protecting those lovely Scully ladies was worth anything he had.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder left Dana sitting in a leather chair near the fireplace in his bedroom wrapped in his bathrobe and with her wet hair brushed back from her face. After she showered, he poured half a bottle of wine into a big glass, handed it to her, and told her to drink it.

 

The shower felt cruelly hot. Mulder lingered, letting his muscles relax and his mind rest. After he stepped out, he wrapped a towel around his waist and cracked open the bathroom door. Dana still sat near the fire. Now she held an empty drinking glass and stared blankly at the flames. Her face was pale and the shadows under her eyes made them look huge. She hadn't said a dozen words since they left the hospital. Healthy, four-year-old girls did not get pneumonia. Only very sick girls did. No one had said that to Mulder, but he knew. And he knew Dana knew.

 

Mulder wiped the fog from the mirror and looked at his reflection. The doctor told him to take Nurse Scully home and get her to sleep before she had a nervous breakdown. Those were the man’s exact words.

 

Mulder never considered taking Dana to her apartment. He wanted her with him, where he knew she was safe. Safe from what, he didn't know.

 

Instead of reaching for the pills the doctor prescribed for Dana, Mulder put a new blade in his safety razor and shaved three days of stubble from his face. It was after midnight. He'd be up in six hours, and he could shave then. He didn't, though.

 

"Dana," he said. She turned her head as he emerged from the bathroom in his T-shirt and pajama bottoms. He'd put on his robe, but she wore it. "Come to bed," he suggested gently.

 

She set down the empty tumbler and stood, her feet bare. He took her hand and led her to the big bed. She lay down, not wanting or forgetting to take off the robe. He folded the blankets over her anyway. She moved back to make a space for him beside her.

 

He sat down on the bed. "We can bring Emily home tomorrow," he said. "The doctor said she'd be fine."

 

Dana looked at him with sad, dull eyes.

 

"Your nurse friend is with Emily," he reminded her. "The one with two sons. She'll stay until seven, and your mother will be there until we get back."

 

"You promised her tickets for her sons." Dana responded as if she just remembered.

 

"Season opener, right behind home plate."

 

"Thank you, Mulder." She thought a moment. "You called my mother?"

 

"I did. I owe her tickets, too, but I don't think she'll take them. She's not a fan."

 

She smiled tiredly.

 

Mulder lay down beside her. "I want Emily to stay here once she comes home. There's plenty of space. It's warmer, less drafty. She'll be more comfortable. We'll get a private duty nurse to take care of her while you're at school or work."

 

Dana didn't agree, but she didn't disagree, either.

 

The fire crackled across the room; it and the windows kept the cold November wind at bay. The trees outside swayed wildly but the bed sheets felt soft and smooth, and sighed as he shifted his feet beneath the blankets. Mulder told himself as soon as Dana was asleep, he'd go sleep in another room. But he didn't bother to work up much resolve.

 

"What about Will?" she asked, seeming to realize what day it was. 

 

"Phoebe is giving him a rough time again, so he'll stay with Frohike this weekend. God knows what they'll get into. I'm sure I'll get the bill, though."

 

"You won't see him until December."

 

"I know." Mulder folded his arm under his head and looked at her. "We'll work it out." He also paid her overdue rent and called her professors, but she was too upset and sleep-deprived to think to ask about those things. "Everything's under control. I have specific orders to get you to sleep, Nurse Scully."

 

She shook her head, looking tipsy. "I don't think I can."

 

Mulder reached back and moved the phone to the edge of the nightstand. "The hospital will call if there's any problem. She’s sleeping, and she can come home tomorrow night." He inhaled. "Dana, the doctor gave me pills to help you sleep. Do you want them?"

 

She shook her head again, as he'd known she would. 

 

He leaned down, kissing her forehead. He traced his lips down her nose and all the way down to the cross necklace at the base of her throat. With his mouth close to her ear, he offered, "May I help you relax? If I'm careful?"

 

This time, she nodded.

 

He kissed her gently, for a long time. He touched her face and ran his fingers through her cold hair as it began to dry into waves. He untied the knot on the belt of her robe and pushed it back from her shoulders. She wore nothing underneath - but he hadn't given her anything. The lamp beside the bed remained on, casting soft shadows across her skin. He ran his thumb over her nipple. It darkened and rose. He lowered his head and sucked gently at her breast. Her fingers slid through his hair. The fire crackled, the wind whistled, and there was only her. She smelled like Ivory soap and tasted like salt and tannin.

 

"Did you nurse Emily?" he asked quietly. "When she was born?"

 

"Until I could go back to work."

 

He could imagine her: young and frightened and alone, nursing her baby because she couldn't afford to feed it any other way. It had been hard taking care of Will as a newborn, with Mulder and Phoebe both. William cried for no reason, they never slept, they never had sex, they were cold, and Mulder worked day and night. The little apartment stayed a mess, and they fought all the time - also for no reason - and money went out the door faster than he could bring it in.

 

Phoebe could conceive a dozen babies she didn't want, but he and Dana could only fight to keep the children they had.

 

Mulder still wanted to point his rifle at someone and get some answers before he pulled the trigger.

 

He shifted, pushing the robe open farther and working his way down with his lips. She moved in slow motion, letting him love her. "What is she, Dana?" he paused to ask. "What is Emily? Why is she sick?"

 

"She's an experiment," Dana whispered, having trouble with the /s/. "The experiment, for her, failed."

 

"Like the Nazi eugenics experiments? A selectively bred human?"

 

Dana nodded.

 

He swallowed and after several false starts, asked, "What am I? Am I one of Them?"

 

She opened her eyes. "I don't know," she told him, and he believed her. "But it's the set of the sail, not the nature of the wind that determines our direction."

 

"I adore you," he whispered. In the quiet bedroom, hours before dawn, they were light and shadow, and a million miles from the rest of the world. "Relax." She exhaled. "Remember-" He kissed down her abdomen and bent up her knee, guiding her legs apart. "I'm under doctor's orders."

 

He put his mouth to her sex, pressing his tongue against the little knot of flesh there. Her response was immediate: a surprised gasp and an instinctive tilt of her hips.

 

"Oh my God," she said breathlessly. “Mulder- Oh my God.”

 

Nice boys didn’t do this. Not even if they were married.

 

As her body grew slick, he slid one, and two fingers inside her. He felt her nails run through his hair and her hand on his other one. He intertwined their fingers. Her grip tightened as he explored her with his lips and tongue. The taste and smell of her surrounded him: honey and ripe pear and musk, soft hair and delicate skin. A tiny, mysterious bundle of nerves that, properly addressed, caused the Earth to move and angels to sing.

 

Her hips rose, and her thighs began to tremble. "Mulder-"

 

He raised his head. "Doctor’s orders,” he repeated. “Relax. I’ve been reading your anatomy textbook on the sly."

 

“Come up here, please.”

 

“Busy,” he told her clitoris.

 

Holding a fistful of his hair, Dana pulled his head up again and insisted, “Come up here.”

 

"Whatever you want." He shoved off his bottoms and shucked off his T-shirt.

 

She raised her mouth to his and guided his bare body on top of hers. He slid inside her, into the hot, tight embrace. It took less than two dozen slow thrusts before he felt her muscles tighten, her breath catch, and her whole body relax.

 

Once she was still, he started to withdraw.

 

"No," she said softly. She wrapped one leg around his hips. "Don't leave."

 

"That wasn't the plan. I won't die, Dana," he assured her.

 

"No." She put her hand on the small of his back, pulling him down. Her legs opened wider.

 

He shivered with pleasure. Sweat trickled between his shoulder blades. He thrust. She convulsed and cried out. Putting his hands over hers, he requested, “Tell me you love me.”

 

“I love you,” she managed as he made love to her. He felt her fingers grip desperately at his. “I love you. Don’t stop.”

 

He did not stop. “Tell me you want me.”

 

She got as far as saying, “I-” before her back arched, and her answer got lost amid another orgasm. “I want you. I want you,” she panted.

 

“Tell me-” He was so close it hurt. "Dana-" he said raggedly. “Do you want me to-" He could pull out, if he paid attention.

 

"No. Doctor's orders," she gasped into his neck, her breath hot.

 

Mulder didn't ask which doctor. He closed his eyes, sank deep inside her, and let the tide take him. It didn't have to take him far.

 

Once he could move and think again, he heard Dana’s voice. "Your cape must be getting threadbare tonight, Superman."

 

"I try to use my powers only for good," he assured her breathlessly.

 

He wasn't sorry. There was no self-reproach. Love wasn't chronological or logical or tidy. It was messy and grew unevenly, sometimes. It was made of layers, from cells to universes. They were their past and present and unknown future. But they were real. As wonderful as hitting a homerun and as frightening as a roller coaster at the top of the hill. And worth anything he had.

 

Mulder checked the telephone for a dial tone, turned off the lamp, and put his arms around her as she slept. When he opened his eyes again, the November wind had stopped howling outside and the sun rose.

 

*~*~*~*

 

The first night after they brought Emily home, Dana slept with Emily, unwilling to let the little girl out of her sight. Mulder kept watch. The second and third night, Emily slept between them. The fourth night though, Em slept in a spare bedroom and Dana slept with Mulder. They didn’t discuss whether Dana belonged in his bed. That was where she was supposed to be, and as if she'd never left.

 

After though, as Mulder slept, Dana slipped away, and he opened his eyes to find he was alone. For a confused instant, Mulder thought he dreamed it: the last night, the last months, the last year. As he woke, for a few horrible seconds, he thought Dana was gone. He let down his guard, and They - the evil eyes in the shadows - took her again.

 

"Dana," he called worriedly, sitting up.

 

"Here," her voice answered from the hall. "I was checking on Emily."

 

Soft light spilled across the floor as his bedroom door opened.

 

"She's okay?"

 

Dana's silhouette nodded. "Still sound asleep." She draped her robe over the foot of the bed and slid, nude, beneath the sheets.

 

With his heart still pounding, Mulder curled up to her. He put his arms around her body and pulled her close.

 

Will would visit after the Thanksgiving holiday. Even if Dana went back to her apartment while Mulder’s son was in Georgetown, Emily was bound to inform William Mommy got to sleep in Mulder's bed. Mulder noticed neighborhood women opening their curtains to keep tabs. He got an acidic call from Mrs. Scully wanting to know where her daughter and granddaughter were because Dana hadn't answered her telephone. Responding “Upstairs,” had not further endeared Mulder to Dana's mother.

 

Mulder knew a solution - though far from a simple one - to his dilemma, but the words 'marry me' had yet to fall out of his mouth. Even if he asked, his gut told him Dana wouldn't say yes. Emily was sick, and Dana's world crumbled. She still had mid-term exams, and over Mulder's objections, she’d worked a shift in the ER this afternoon. Letting Mulder help with the dinner dishes or deposit her paycheck or make love to her: that was battlefield medicine. Those wartime marriages - with the exception of John Byers - they didn't end well.

 

"What are we doing, Dana?" he asked.

 

"I'm sleeping," she mumbled. "I have a class in the morning."

 

After a second, he asked, "What happens once you and Emily don't need me anymore?"

 

"We don't need you. Well, we need you to reach things on the top shelf," she answered sleepily. "We keep letting you in and feeding you because we love you."

 

"And I love you," he answered.

 

Dana shifted a few times and closed her eyes. She put her cold feet on the top of his, and her head fit perfectly beneath his chin.

 

Loving her was effortless. What he did with that love - and the rest of their lives - was the hardest thing in the world. Dead reckoning, he reminded himself in the darkness.

 

"I want to tell you something," he said softly.

 

"You suffer from chronic insomnia and a variety of neuroses?"

 

"Really. I want to tell you something.” Before he lost his nerve. “About Phoebe. About me. About me and Phoebe. Are you awake?"

 

"Okay," she conceded with a sigh. "What is it?"

 

He took a deep breath, and started with, "After Will was born, I knew she was miserable. Phoebe didn't understand what it meant when the Yankees signed me. To her, baseball meant another job where I was never home. I wasn't happy she took Will and went to London, but so long as he was safe, I told myself it was okay. It wasn't, but Phoebe and I talked on the telephone and she sent photographs of Will. I hit the baseballs and paid the bills. I saw them again that winter. Will could walk and say 'Dada' and things were... They were okay. Not that Phoebe and I saw eye to eye, but she liked the parties and being able to throw money around. I don't, but I wanted her to be happy. Give me enough liquor and I can tolerate anything." Mulder paused. "She didn't like me paying attention to William, but that wasn't new. She wouldn't go back to the States with me, but I got on the Queen Mary to come home for spring training in 1940 more worried about getting seasick than getting divorced."

 

Dana was quiet, listening, and probably wondering why he told her this, since she knew how the story turned out.

 

"The photographs of Will dwindled. Phoebe wasn't at her flat when I telephoned. By fall, German U-boats torpedoed passenger ships in the Atlantic, but I flew from San Francisco to Singapore, to Cairo, and hopscotched right into the London Blitz. I'd told Phoebe she and Will would leave with me. In fact, I sent a telegram telling her to get on a plane when the air raids started, but she said Will was safe in the countryside with her mother and Nanny Marie, and Phoebe was afraid to fly. I didn’t arrive in London until December. Phoebe had a room at Brown's Hotel; she said it was closer to the air raid shelter, and so fans wouldn't mob her flat. The government restricted civilian train travel, and the Germans bombed a station between us and Will, so Phoebe said we had to wait while the tracks got repaired. I told her we'd hire a car; she said gasoline was rationed. She had an answer for everything." Mulder hesitated, but said as politely as he knew how, "Phoebe didn't want another baby. She wanted me to be careful, and so I was. Every time. She hadn't liked carrying Will, the world was about to go to war, and it seemed a reasonable request. Days passed, and a week, but all Phoebe wanted to do was drink and party and make love in between air raids. Even with enough money to bribe our way onto a plane or ship, I wasn't sure how we’d get back to America with a toddler. Phoebe didn't seem to think that was important, and she couldn’t find her passport or our marriage certificate or Will's birth certificate. Whenever I brought up getting Will, she put me off. I demanded to know when she last saw our son, and she said June - but Nanny Marie was with him, so she knew he was fine."

 

Dana interlaced her fingers with his. "You like to believe the best of people."

 

"Or I'm a chump." He exhaled slowly. "There was a party - closer to the West End than Mayfair, so we stumbled back to her flat late, both three sheets to the wind. She'd complained my beard bothered her face, so I thought I'd shave before bed. I found a safety razor and a new blade, but no shaving soap or cream or brush. I looked in the cabinet for something of hers I could use, or something I might have left the previous winter. In the back, behind a stack of towels, I found a nice man's shaving kit – but not mine."

 

The fireplace burned down to glowing embers. He watched it while he gathered his courage. "I was drunk and I was angry. I was too rough - rougher even than she likes - and I conveniently forgot about being careful. Phoebe was livid. She started yelling at me, and I informed her she was my wife, I paid the bills, Will was my son, and we were getting on a plane whether she liked it or not. She slapped me, and I shoved her against the bedroom wall so hard her head dented the plaster." He stopped, took another breath, and admitted, "After my sister disappeared, my father would get drunk and hit my mother. He hit me, for a while. He hated us, I hated him, and I think he hated himself."

 

Mulder waited for Dana to say something, but she didn't.

 

"Phoebe started shaking. It scared me. We'd had rows before, but nothing like that. I apologized and tried to see if she was hurt. I realized she was laughing at me, not crying. I told her I was getting Will and going back to the States; she could stay in the middle of a war and bed the entire Royal Navy for all I cared. Phoebe kept giggling. I started to worry she was having a psychotic break, but she put her arms around my neck and whispered in my ear, 'You'll never find him, Fox.' I called her a name. Several names. She started yelling, and she hit me again. I hit her back, and she didn't think that was funny."

 

He swallowed, his stomach tightening at the memory.

 

"Phoebe said she wanted a divorce, and she told me to get out. I got dressed and walked back to the hotel with the air raid sirens going off and the German planes flying over the city. The next morning, she called crying that I hit her and I wanted to take our son. I told her I was sorry, and promised I wouldn't take him if I knew where he was and he was safe. She said William was Derbyshire."

 

"Where is that?"

 

"About 130 miles north of London. In the country. I told Phoebe to pack a suitcase, and she didn't argue. I never asked who her lover was. I called the telephone number she gave me, and I talked with Will's nanny. Marie thought Will was safer staying where he was than trying to take him back to the States. Marie said ships had been boarded and planes shot down and all the things I knew. I met Phoebe, rode with her to the station, and bought two train tickets for Derby. She had a bruise on her face, and people stared her and whispered about me. On the platform, Phoebe started to cry. I told her again I was sorry and I loved her. I'd make it up to her and I didn't want a divorce. I wanted her and Will to be safe and happy, and to come home." Mulder tried to get the lump in his throat to go down. "Phoebe said everything was my fault, and she hated me. Going to bed with me, marrying me, having a child by me: all a mistake. She said England was her home. I was a monster, Will didn't even know me, and if I wanted them to be happy, I should leave. Leave them alone. The train arrived and Phoebe got on it. I stood there. After the train left, I got on a plane for the States. Alone. The US entered the war, I enlisted, and the next time I saw Will, he was six-years old."

 

It was like eons before Dana asked, "Was there a baby?"

 

"Phoebe never said, but probably not. Not then."

 

"Would you have wanted there to be?" she asked hesitantly, in the darkness.

 

"Yes."

 

"Because you like being a father, or because you thought she wouldn't leave you while she was expecting?"

 

"Yes," Mulder repeated.

 

The clock ticked, and his breathing seemed too loud. He didn't know what else to say, so he lay there with her.

 

"You asked a few months ago what I would do if you were Emily's father," Dana said. "If you tried to take her away from me, and you had the power and the money to do it. I don't think a drunken slap-fight would be my first impulse. Cold-blooded they'll-never-find-the-body murder would probably be my first impulse."

 

"I've had that one, too," he assured her quietly.

 

"I know, Mulder. I know you love me, and I know what's at stake for you. Don't try to convince me you're a bad husband and father, because neither is true. I know you, and I know you love your son, and I know we can't do this forever," Dana said. "I know I'm playing with fire. They're a few stolen nights, and I'm grateful, and I keep telling myself each one is the last one. I'm going to take my daughter and go back across the alley and-"

 

"And put the genie back in the bottle?" She shifted closer, and he rested his hand on her hip. He ran his thumb over the soft flesh and asked, "What if-"

 

"I won't. Or, if by some miracle I would, I'll miscarry early on." She put her hand on his bare chest. "You're right; there's no going back, but there's no going forward, either."

 

"There is," he offered. "Even if you still wanted to go to school. To be a doctor, even. I’m not as hopelessly old-fashioned as everyone thinks."

 

She shook her head.

 

He swallowed again and asked, "Dana, I'd like for you to stay. We'll figure something out. I'll tell Will... Something. But I'd also like for you to tell me the truth. About you. And me. My sister. And Emily. And whatever happened last winter."

 

"I told you I don't remember," she insisted, her voice quiet. "I'm sorry."

 

"You have to remember something, and I think I deserve to know. You said Emily is a military experiment gone wrong. What were they trying to create? Is it me? Is that what made our babies so special? You and Emily's father got it wrong, but you and I got it right? Or was it not me at all?"

 

"Mulder, I don't know."

 

"Jesus. I told you I got drunk and hit my wife and left my two-year-old son in the middle of a war. You think I'm going to judge you if you made a mistake? But if what you first told me is the truth - women disappearing, having babies they don't remember conceiving, government eugenics projects and experiments on its own citizens - it's not just you. Not just that base. There are cases of other women. The FBI knows. The military knows. I've been talking to Agent Dales. He calls those cases 'X-files'. I told him-"

 

"You've been what? What did you tell him?"

 

"Arthur Dales was the FBI agent assigned when you disappeared. He knows what happened - at least, as much as I do. He'd like to talk with you."

 

"Well, I don't want to talk to him," she said icily. "I don't want you talking to him about me or Emily, either. Damn it, Mulder - you promised me!"

 

"I promised not to go back to the base. Do you see me anywhere near the base?"

 

She pushed up on her elbow, her hair tousled and an angry crease between her eyebrows. "I don't care what you want to know, or if you don't understand, or what the hell you think the truth is. You can judge me however you want. Put my picture up in the post office with 'whore' written under it, if that's what you want to believe. But if you say one more word to Agent Dales or anyone in the FBI about anything except your dissertation, I will leave you. I will take Emily and disappear, and you will never see us again. Whether we're married or not, whether you're paying the bills or not, whether you hit me or not, whether we're having a baby or not. Tell me you understand, Mulder, because there is no second chance."

 

He stared at her, his mouth open.

 

“Say it,” she demanded.

 

"I understand," he repeated numbly.

 

"Good." She rolled away and lay down with a huff. "Go to sleep," she ordered.

 

He stared at the back of her head and her bare shoulders, and past her, at the warm hearth and the dark night outside the window. "I want to know why I can’t know the truth."

 

After a moment, she answered in a whisper, "The same reason as the last time we had this conversation: because I love you."

 

"Okay," he said softly.

 

She scooted back, he put his arms around her again, and they slept.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Life magazine once called Mulder ‘a private, dignified man.’

 

With as much privacy and dignity as he could muster, Mulder leaned over the landing and instructed for a fifth time, "Don't take your knickers off. You can't go if you take your knickers off!" 

 

Emily frowned up at him as she scratched where nice girls didn’t scratch.

 

"Leave them on," Dana called from the hall bathroom upstairs.

 

Emily pushed her bottom lip out but dropped the hem of her party dress. She still scratched miserably at the wool leggings. "The dress is itchy. I wanna wear my overalls," she insisted.

 

"You need a nice dress to go to the big grownup restaurant with us, and your leggings will keep you warm. You can take them off once we get there,” Mulder offered. “Come help me pick out a tie; your mommy's almost ready."

 

He held the possibilities over the banister. In New York, the Plaza maids had a system for organizing his wardrobe, but in Georgetown he was at the mercy of a new maid and the Scully ladies. Emily found it remarkable she could see things he couldn't - like he wasn't smart enough to tell red from green. Mulder appeared in public more than once wearing mismatched socks while Em giggled at him.

 

"What color do you want?" Emily asked, hands on her hips.

 

Mulder jogged down the steps. "Green. A green or blue tie goes with this suit."

 

Emily pointed to the one on the left and watched as he tied it in the mirror in the foyer.

 

"That tie’s brown and your suit's gray," Dana informed him as she crossed the landing in her slip. "Be nice to Mulder, Emily."

 

Emily blinked in wide-eyed innocence. Mulder squatted so they were nose-to-nose as he pulled his tie off. "I'm gonna-" he began to tease her, but got interrupted by a knock on the front door. 

 

Mulder answered the door and, to his surprise, found his son on the porch. William looked like a pampered house cat accidentally left out all night. The boy had his backpack over one shoulder, an angry pout on his face, and stood about 225 miles from where he should be. "Will? What are you doing here, son?"

 

Emily smiled. Will didn’t look at her.

 

"How did you get here?"

 

Will shrugged. He stepped inside and dropped his backpack. He shucked off his black leather jacket and tossed it at the coat rack.

 

"Is something wrong?" Mulder persisted. "What's wrong?"

 

Another shrug. The fish gathered at one end of the tank, watching.

 

"Is your mother all right?" Mulder asked.

 

"As all right as she ever is," William answered curtly.

 

"Does she know where you are? You can't run away, Will. I'm calling Phoebe before she calls the police."

 

Mulder had his hand on the telephone when Will blurted out, "Mother's angry about Thanksgiving being her holiday with me when she doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving. She said I'm to spend the week with you and your- I’m to be with Mother in London over Christmas."

 

"That's the truth, Will? Your mother knows you're here? Because if it's not, I'll be in trouble along with you."

 

"She gave me money for the plane ticket. She knows where I am," Will conceded. He looked distastefully at Emily, who scratched again. "Why is she dressed like that?"

 

"We were going out to dinner. Dana finished her last mid-term exam and Em's feeling better, so we were going out to celebrate. Why didn't you call from the airport? I could have picked you up." 

 

Dana called from the landing, "Wear this one, Mulder. It-" A tie fluttered down to the foyer, but Dana stood rooted on the upstairs landing. "Hello, William." Her eyes moved to the high heels she held rather than wore, then focused anxiously on Mulder. "Is everything okay?"

 

She wore a blue satin gown with an enormous skirt; she’d worn the dress to the New Year’s Eve party last year. From the loose look of the bodice, she’d planned on having Mulder zip up the back.

 

The boy’s displeasure with life seemed to harden and focus on her. "Does something have to be wrong for me to see my father?" Will snapped.

 

She said worriedly, “No.” After a second, she put an arm across her chest and descended the steps.

 

"Aren’t I on the schedule? Isn't this my day to be his son?"

 

"Of course." Dana gave Mulder another worried look.

 

Unsure what else to do, Mulder stepped close and zipped up the back of her gown, covering a strapless black bra. He put a hand on her bare shoulder.

 

Recovering her poise, Dana asked, "Are you coming to dinner with us, Will? I bet one of Mulder's suits will fit you. But don't let Emily pick out your tie."

 

"Don't tell me what to do," Will shot back angrily. "You're not my mother."

 

"You're right." Her shoulder tensed, and she sounded hurt. "I'm just warning you Em has learned her colors and how to lie convincingly."

 

"Fine. Whatever," Will muttered. He passed her without making eye contact and trudged up the stairs.

 

*~*~*~*

 

"Qu'est-ce que vous voulez, Monsieur?" The waiter held his pad and pencil ready.

 

"Salmon, Dana?" Mulder glanced up to make sure she hadn't changed her mind. After she nodded, he ordered for everyone in French, including Emily's jam sandwich and glass of milk, and the upper left-hand column of the veal section for Will. His son could have ordered for himself in fluent French, but found it beneath him. William had held up the menu and gestured vaguely, so Mulder conveyed that to the waiter.

 

"Confiture de fraises pour mademoiselle, Monsieur Mulder?" the waiter confirmed with great dignity.

 

Mulder translated. "Strawberry jam, Em?"

 

Emily nodded while nibbling at the wing of an elaborate apple swan the chef had carved for her. "Oui," she told him proudly, trying out her new vocabulary word.

 

"Bien entendu," the waiter assured Mulder. He added to her, "Mademoiselle."

 

"Oui," Emily repeated, and Mulder and Dana chuckled.

 

Emily sat up taller on her booster seat of telephone books. She adjusted the floppy chef's hat she'd wheedled out of the owner. Nearby patrons smiled. So far, bringing a child to a grownup restaurant hadn’t been a problem but they seldom had a problem bringing Emily anywhere. Will, on the other hand, looked so sullen Mulder imagined a black cloud above the boy's head.

 

Another waiter appeared to refill their water goblets. In the silence after he left, William continued to glower. Dana adjusted a butter knife and repositioned her goblet. She glanced at Mulder, who shrugged a shoulder uncertainly. 

 

Emily offered the wingtip of her apple swan. Dana reached across the table to take the piece, and the low neckline of the Bergdorf Goodman Dior gown dipped even lower. The tight bodice pushed her breasts into twin half-moons. The dress - or the taking off of the dress - held pleasant memories for Mulder. Dana, unaware of Mulder’s one-man Cleavage Appreciation Society, wiped an imaginary smudge from her daughter’s cheek. Mulder shifted in his chair, calculated the number of hours until bedtime, and gave thanks his son and her daughter were sound sleepers.

 

Out of the corner of his eye, Mulder noticed the Cleavage Appreciation Society had a second member. He gave William a stern look. The boy’s cheeks darkened.

 

Dana, catching on, sat back, and Mulder got a stern look himself. He gave her a crooked grin and put his hand over hers on the table. Her reprimand became a secret, promising smile. Mulder began mentally composing a ‘growing boys need their rest’ speech.

 

“Does she know?” William’s voice asked casually.

 

Mulder glanced from Dana to his son.

 

The boy’s face remained flushed but he’d adopted a sugary-sweet expression and addressed Dana. “Do you know how much my father likes you? I think you’re the one ginger Father’s keen on, Miss Scully,” William continued innocently. “He fancies brunettes. He has those long-legged, empty-headed models and actresses laying about."

 

Mulder tipped his head. "What are you talking about?"

 

"She didn't know about Diana? Or the others?" William took a sip from his water goblet. "I'm sorry, Daddy-O. Not dating, Miss Scully," he said as if to explain. "Like when Mother stops over. They used to be married, after all.” He paused. “I'd say you're as special to my father as he is to you. At least when he’s in D.C."

 

"W-Will," Mulder wanted to hit his head with his palm and get his brain restarted, since he couldn't possibly have heard that.

 

"Yes, Father Dearest? Are some of those women redheads? It's hard for me to tell."

 

Dana’s hand slid from beneath Mulder’s fingers and to her lap.

 

"Will, in New York, I go to meetings, make PR appearances-” Mulder said, “-alone - and I spend time with you. The brunettes I see there are you and Frohike. There are no women in New York. Or in Detroit or Boston or anywhere else. The gods scramble for cover if your mother and I are in the same courtroom together, let alone the same bedroom. What's the matter with you?"

 

"Nothing," Will insisted. "I'm young and angry and confused." He looked pointedly at Dana. "This is worth risking everything for, Daddy-O? This is worth the wait? I recall a queue, but not much of a wait."

 

Emily looked from Will to Mulder and back again, also confused.

 

"We're, uh- We're going to wash our hands. Please excuse us." Mulder pushed back from the table. "Let's go, Will."

 

"What?" The boy still looked earnestly wholesome.

 

"Move." Mulder managed not to grab his son by the scruff of his neck. He settled for keeping a firm hand on Will’s shoulder as they made their way to the lobby. "What the hell was that, William? How could you say those things to her?"

 

Will slouched against the back of an upholstered chair in the ornate lobby, refusing to answer.

 

"Come on, Will. What's the problem?" Mulder got his temper in check. "Dana was at my house? Emily's been sick. Very sick. She's been staying with me this week, and Dana's staying with her. I told you on the telephone. You’ve been in Dana’s apartment. It’s either roasting or freezing, and she’d have to carry Em up and down all those steps." He paused. “How can you not understand this, son?”

 

Will stopped leaning on the chair. He crossed his arms miserably as he stared at the Oriental rug and his borrowed wingtips.

 

"Will..." Mulder prompted sternly.

 

"I hate her!" the boy shouted. Several heads turned in the next room. "And she hates me! Everything I do is wrong and she treats me like I ruined her life. If it wasn't for me, she'd still be pouring pints for a bunch of pissed Oxford prigs!"

 

Mulder changed tacks. "What happened with your mother? Is she... Is she sick?" He chose his words carefully. Frohike hadn't mentioned anything, so Mulder had assumed Phoebe’s appointment was successful. “Is she in some sort trouble?”

 

"I don't want to live with her.” Will’s face flushed again. “I hate it. Miss Scully lives with you. Why can't you marry her and I could live with you? I could-"

 

"Wait, wait." Mulder signaled a timeout. "Dana and I do not live together. She has her apartment and I have my house-"

 

"And you spend a lot of time warming her bed at night."

 

"Watch your mouth, William Adam. I'm not discussing-"

 

"Of course you aren't," Will shot back. "That doesn't make it any less true."

 

"Dana's a nice lady-"

 

"She's a bloody whore!" Will pointed at their table. "And you're daft."

 

All heads in the restaurant turned. Dana's face darkened. Mulder held his hands up in a back-off gesture until he was certain he wouldn’t hit his son. "Outside," he said through his teeth.

 

The clouds blew sleet, and Mulder’s mood turned as dark and angry as his son's. William leaned against the restaurant’s brick wall. He watched warily while his father paced the sidewalk. Mulder paused to raise a finger, start to speak, but changed his mind and resumed pacing. He had no allusions as to what Phoebe called Dana, but it sounded different from Will's mouth.

 

"If there was ever a best time to announce you're on drugs, this is it," Mulder said. He took a slow breath. "Okay, I'm listening, Will. You have my full attention." He stopped. Mulder stood eye-to-eye with his son and crossed his arms. He asked slowly, enunciating each word, "What is wrong?"

 

"I'll tell her it's not true - about the other women. I'll say I'm sorry," William mumbled miserably. He ducked as if to avoid the falling sleet.

 

"Dana knows it's not true and saying 'I'm sorry' is not going to get it. How dare you!"

 

To Mulder’s surprise, a tear trickled from the corner of the boy's eye. The tear tugged at Mulder’s heart like water finding a weak spot in a dam.

 

"Will, what's wrong? You don't hate Dana. I know you worry, but you don't hate her."

 

"What Mother says about Miss Scully, is it true? About Emily? You never really answered me."

 

"About Dana not being married to Emily's father? Yes, that's true. But I don't think Dana had any say over whether or not she had a baby. Do you understand?"

 

"You mean someone forced her."

 

Mulder nodded.

 

“Why would she want to keep Emily, then?”

 

“Dana’s a brave, headstrong woman. She’s the only female student in her medical school. She puts up with the photographers and fans who follow me. Last week, she fixed the kitchen sink. Keeping Emily doesn’t seem out of character.” He checked the toes of his polished shoes. “Also, Dana’s memory of how Emily came to be is hazy. At first, I don’t think she remembered at all. She knew she was unwed and expecting a baby and had nightmares. She still has nightmares, son, like I do.”

 

Will’s posture was less angry, more uncertain. "You believe that’s what happened?"

 

"I do."

 

"That's quite convenient for her."

 

Mulder exhaled slowly. "I think that's your mother talking, Will."

 

Will glanced up, but down again. "But you thought Miss Scully was a widow when you asked her to marry you last Christmas?"

 

"Yes," he admitted. "She told me later."

 

"After you slept with her?"

 

"Will, I don't want to have this conversation. Yes, she told me, and at first I didn't handle it well. Once I had some time to think- You were there, son. You know what happened."

 

"When did you know about the baby?"

 

Mulder blinked. "What baby?" He wondered at the penalty for strangling his ex-wife. "Dana's not going to have a baby, Will. We're not married."

 

Will focused those dark eyes on his father. "Mother said she was. Last winter."

 

"I'm not going to discuss that with you."

 

"Listen to your own lectures once in a while, Dad. If the baby was yours, why didn't you marry her?"

 

Mulder gritted his teeth but didn't speak.

 

"Because it wasn't yours," Will barked. "You didn't know until spring, but it wasn't."

 

"Enough, Will," Mulder warned. "We're not having this discussion."

 

"The difference between five and three is two months. October. I can testify you were bedding someone else in October. Apparently, so was she. I can do the maths, Dad. Can you?"

 

"It's not your business!"

 

"It is my business," Will yelled back. "You and Frohike and everyone else need to stop telling me it's not my business. You are all I have, and you are wrecking my life over this woman. I'm sorry. I'm sorry she did that to you. I hate her for it. But I hate you more. Do you blindly believe anything she tells you? Did that baby's father rape her, too? Or does she not remember? How inconvenient to find herself up the duff by the last fellow when a new chump came along."

 

Mulder knew that was Phoebe talking, but still. "Will, you don't understand-"

 

"What don't I understand? Why would Miss Scully get rid of the baby if it was yours? Getting knocked up by you was the most profitable thing my mother ever did. Miss Scully took off with the other bloke, and when he didn't want the baby, she got rid of it and came crying home to you. Everything's peachy keen, though. You took her back like nothing happened.”

 

“Will-”

 

“Police, Dad! The policemen said they’d arrest you if I didn’t go back to Mother’s apartment with them. You said to go with them, and it would be okay. You said Mrs. Scully would come back and everything would be fine. I could live with you. She came back, Dad, but everything’s not fine. It’s not okay. I can’t live with you. You aren’t even in New York most of the time-”

 

“Will-”

 

“You’re here playing house with her and her poor, sick, adorable little bastard. Emily’s not yours, Dad. The baby wasn’t yours. I’m yours!”

 

"William!" Mulder said sharply.

 

"I have to live with my crazy mother because you are shacking up with a lying whore! Are you daft? Or do you not care? Is she that good a fuck?"

 

"Enough!" Mulder shouted, and Will cowered. Mulder took a few breaths before he said as calmly as he could manage, "You will not say that about Dana. I don't care what your mother's told you. What happened between Dana and I last year was horrible, and it is not your business, and I'm not going to discuss it with you, and that's final. If you call Dana a whore or a liar or say 'fuck' or ‘bastard’ again in any relation to Dana or her daughter, I'm putting you on a plane back to your crazy mother in New York!"

 

His son leaned against the brick wall, staring down the wet sidewalk. "I hate you." Will struggled not to cry. "I hate you, I hate my mother, and I hate my life."

 

Mulder stepped closer. Will shoved him back, cursing, and turned away. Mulder tried to put a hand on his son's shoulder. Will shrugged it off and refused to look at him.

 

The restaurant door swung open, letting the sounds of D.C.'s elite spill out onto the sidewalk before it closed again with a well-mannered whoosh. Behind him, Mulder heard a woman’s shoes approach. The crinoline of her skirt whispered as it swayed, and her stilettos clicked across the wet cement.

 

"I'm sorry to interrupt," Dana said hesitantly. "Mulder, everyone's smoking in the restaurant. I didn't anticipate that, but Emily is having trouble breathing."

 

"Okay. I think we should go home." Mulder took a few more breaths, trying to calm down. "I'll pay the check." He pointed at Will. "You: do not move. Do not speak."

 

"The owner said not to worry about it, for us to come back another evening and they'd put us in a private room." She looked at Will standing a few feet away, still sniffing and flushed. "Is there anything I can do?"

 

Mulder shook his head. He fished in his pocket for his spare set of keys. "I'm not in the mood to wait for the valet; would you mind if we walked to the car?"

 

"Some fresh air would be nice. Emily, are you all right to walk?" 

 

Bundled in her wool snowsuit, Emily agreed and took her mother's hand. She assumed Dana would feed her dinner at some point and it would involve strawberry jam on white bread with the crust cut off. Mulder wondered what it must be like to have a child's unconditional trust.

 

"We're going home, Will," Mulder said neutrally, still keeping his distance.      

 

"You can go to Hell! Take your whore and her bastard with you!"

 

“What is wrong?” Dana mouthed. She pointed to herself questioningly. Mulder held both his palms up in the classic 'hands off' gesture.

 

"Let's go," Mulder muttered. He took Emily's other hand but picked her up in his need for something to do. Will followed, refusing to acknowledge their presence but muttering the occasional “bloody whore” comment. Mulder pretended to ignore him while waiting for the Wisdom Fairy to smite him. The Conscience Fairy arrived with his usual agenda, bringing his friends Hurt, Insecurity, and Guilt, but all the helpful fairies must have previous engagements. Yes, Virginia, there is an Insecurity Fairy; he brings ulcers and ex-wives.

 

A moment later, William said, "Dad," sounding younger and less sure of himself.

 

"I'm not speaking to you until you calm down," Mulder insisted, but turned anyway.

 

Two men pointed pistols at Mulder as they stepped out from the shadows. Though barely dusk, the evening was overcast and miserable. Aside from the men with guns, no one but Mulder, Will, Emily, and Dana used the alley between the restaurant and the parking lot. 

 

Mulder wondered if this might be a positive turn, considering how their big evening out had gone so far. He set Emily down, let go of Dana, and slowly reached for his wallet. "Take the money and go. We don't want any trouble." He eased his wallet out of his pocket.

 

Rather than watching Mulder, the muggers focused on Dana. They exchanged looks. One grinned, his chapped lips parting. His breath made white vapor in front of his face as he watched her.

 

A door opened inside Mulder and a seasoned soldier emerged. A killer far more dangerous than either mugger.

 

Mulder could stop them. Even unarmed, two-to-one, and with both assailants at least fifteen years younger. Mulder could grab a gun, land a punch, break an arm, snap a neck before either man could hurt Dana. Mulder could kill both muggers in seconds. He’d bet his life on it.

 

But he wouldn’t bet Dana’s, Will’s, and Emily’s life.

 

"Will-" Mulder prayed his son wouldn't choose this moment to argue with him. "-take Dana and Emily, and get out of here. Drop your watch and wallet, pick up Emily, grab Dana, and run. Make Dana go with you if you have to."

 

Mulder heard Will's watch hit the pavement and Dana's heels hurrying away. The leering mugger watched them leave, but didn’t follow.

 

Holding his own billfold and raising his hand, trying to keep the men's attention, Mulder said loudly, "There's two-hundred dollars here, and I'm wearing a World Series ring and a Rolex. It's yours. And my car keys - the black Cadillac on the next lot."

 

Will would take Dana and Emily back to the restaurant, and Mulder wanted these men headed in the opposite direction. He laid everything on the wet asphalt and backed away. Everyone was fine, and with the exception of the ring and his father's watch, possessions were replaceable. Such a charming way to end an evening, though: at the police station going through pictures of criminals.

 

"Okay?" Mulder took another step back. He kept both hands in sight.

 

He still wanted to kill them. To feel their bones give way beneath his hands, hear slugs tear through flesh and muscle. For the way they’d looked at Dana. For what they’d been thinking.

 

The sound of Will’s shoes and Dana’s high heels faded.

 

The men didn’t move toward his wallet. They kept their guns trained on Mulder. Mulder stepped backward again. The handsome, dark-haired man’s thumb moved and the hammer clicked back. 

 

*~*~*~*

 

For a time - Mulder couldn't tell between seconds, hours, or eons - consciousness was like a few women he had known. Reality was a casual acquaintance he found acceptable to see again, but he had no hard feelings if he didn't. He didn't even see the point in politely lying and saying he'd stay in touch, because he wouldn't.

 

Mulder heard snatches of conversation, and men told Dana the same thing; he wasn't going to make it and she could stop trying. Sleet stung Mulder’s face and gravel pressed into his shoulders. He smelled Dana's perfume: that exotic scent she wore on special occasions. His chest felt warm and wet. In the background, he heard Emily crying, frightened, and Will's hoarse voice asking if his dad would be okay. Mulder surmised his own situation as grave, to make a bad joke, but he smiled inwardly as Dana told the men - medics, probably - to go to Hell. No one would win a battle of wills with Nurse Scully, so if she said Mulder wouldn’t die, he might as well resign himself to living.

 

"Don't you leave me, Mulder," he heard her command, and he knew he'd promised he wouldn't.

 

Other voices passed through the darkness in search of him, impatiently dissipating into nothing before he could respond. To Mulder, the time inside his mind moved slowly, but life around him was a film running too quickly. He caught a few plot points: sirens, needles entering his skin, the whirring and beeping of machines, and someone covering him with a warm blanket as though he was a sick child. In general, reality had little application to him. It was another ship passing in the immense night.

 

Despite his promise, Mulder felt himself start to drift from the shore. On the opposite bank of a lake, he saw a small figure watching patiently through the mist. He felt himself borne not from life, but deeper into it - to a place where the universe condensed to its simple core. There was no pain or fear or even regret. There was warm velvet darkness, and a vast lake, and a woman who waited for him across space and time. He reached the end of the rope tethering him and stopped, waiting, buoyed by the waves. The bonds holding him to the world remained strong, and he couldn't go to her yet.

 

"Mulder. I need you to wake up, Mulder," a woman's voice said, finding him in his warm cocoon. He felt her hand over his. He moved his thumb against her palm, letting her know he could hear. "You're in the hospital, Mulder. There's an oxygen mask on your face helping you breathe, and we're giving you blood and medicine through IV's in your arms. You just came out of surgery. Don't try to talk, but I want you to open your eyes. Look at me. Otherwise, I need you to be still."

 

He tried to tell her he understood but something covered his mouth and nose, and breathing hurt. He wanted to shake his head to get it off but couldn't. As he struggled to move at all, waves of pain and nausea buffeted him until he froze, terrified. Tears seeped from the outer corners of his eyes. Dying was a perfectly natural event so long as it didn't apply to him or anyone he knew.

 

His brain wouldn’t work right. Mulder decided he'd been wounded in combat and woke in the Army field hospital - but that wound was in his leg. Now, his chest ached. It hurt to breathe and he felt so very, very tired.

 

"It's okay. I just want you to open your eyes, big guy," the woman's voice instructed. She stroked his forehead. "Everything is going to be fine."

 

After a few tries, Mulder got his eyelids to open. He blinked through a layer of Vaseline someone had put on them. The woman wiped it off, and he saw her pale face and white surgical gown. She was pretty, but from the purple shadows under her eyes and the firm way she held her lips, things were worse than she let on. His condition must fit some 'at least you're not dead' definition of 'fine.'

 

Scully. Her name was Dana Scully. Mulder closed his eyes again. Inside his mind, he still saw her standing on the far bank of the broad lake, waiting for him.

 

"Hello there," she whispered, taking his right hand again. "You're in Georgetown University Hospital in Recovery. We're moving you to a room in a few minutes. Do you remember what happened?"

 

He couldn't, and he couldn't speak to tell her.

 

"You were shot twice. Once through the shoulder and once close to the heart. They had to put you on a heart-lung bypass machine to fix the damage to your aorta. Another doctor worked on your shoulder. You've been in surgery for hours."

 

Her name was Scully and he loved her. He had for eons. He suspected she had loved him, as well. Eyes closed, he raised his right index finger, pointing to her. 'I know you,' he wanted to say.  

 

"I'm fine, and so are Will and Emily. They're with Mr. Frohike. You gave us a scare, Mulder. The doctors didn't think you were going to make it."    

 

He pointed at her again, and touched the layers of gauze covering his chest, tapping lightly. He wanted to know if she was his nurse. Or a lady doctor; he couldn't remember. And he'd forgotten her name. But he knew her.

 

"You remember?" The woman sounded surprised. "Yes, I worked on your heart until the ER doctors took over. Will's waiting. He's terrified, and I promised he could sit with you. Are you in any pain?"

 

He couldn't remember who Will was, either. Regardless, he nodded, barely moving his head.

 

"I'll see what I can do." Her voice moved away but he kept hold of her hand, still confused and frightened. "You have to let go, Mulder. I'm going to get the doctor and talk to William, and I'll be right back. I'm not going to leave you."

 

He must be Mulder. Fox Mulder was in the FBI. Or a baseball player. He couldn't remember which. William Mulder was his father. It would be nice to see his father.

 

He tried to thank her but his throat felt scratchy, so he released his grip and let the riptide take him. His bruised and battered heart slowed, winding down.

 

He heard the woman's voice, loud and angry now, and a man's deep voice arguing with her. Something crashed to the floor, shattering and clattering loudly. Mulder decided he was in Our Lady of Mercy Hospital, up in The Bronx, not far from Yankee Stadium. There was the pretty little nurse in the Mercy ER he wanted to go back and see again. He’d seen her before, years ago. This time, he wanted to have her take his stitches out and see if he could get a date. There was something about her. As though his weary, wandering soul recognized hers.

 

He moved again, his body drifting away of its own accord into the blackness of space and toward the woman on the opposite shore. Mulder felt warm and tired, but not afraid. It hurt to breathe, and so he didn't.

 

*~*~*~*  

 

He floated slowly to the surface of consciousness, at first only hearing the slow, patient thud of his heart inside his chest. He heard a clock ticking, and distant male footsteps on a hard floor. He smelled disinfectant and bandages and sickness. He heard a woman sobbing softly. His left arm ached, so he tried to move it. It wouldn't move. A weight pressed on his abdomen. He inched his right hand toward it and felt the top of someone's head. He slid his hand farther and rested it on the side of a woman's wet face. After a dry swallow, he parted his lips. He moved his fingertips over her face, exploring. The weight lifted from his stomach and the face moved away.

 

"Mulder," a female voice said. A small hand took his. "Can you hear me? Squeeze my hand," she commanded, and he did.

 

He exhaled and tried to turn his head toward her voice beside him.

 

A warm hand touched his face. "Open your eyes."

 

It took some concentration, but he opened his eyes, blinking and trying to focus them. After a few seconds, he saw a woman in a nurse's uniform. Her eyes were blue, and she'd been crying. She looked at him as if she'd asked for a miracle and began to believe she might get it.

 

He moistened his lips and said the first thing he thought. "Scully," he managed softly.

 

She smiled. There were more tears.

 

"Dana Scully," he revised, barely breath with words attached.

 

"I'll settle for 'Scully.' You can see me, hear me?"

 

He nodded. "Don't cry, Scully."

 

Her smile broadened. She wiped her face with her free hand. "I will do my best. Do you know where you are or what's happened?"

 

It hurt to turn his head, so he moved his eyes left and right, and saw a nondescript hospital room. "No," he responded, starting to get tired.

 

"You were shot. You're in Georgetown University Hospital. You've been unconscious for several days. Will and Emily are with Mr. Frohike.  They're safe."

 

"My arm..."

 

"We'll worry about the arm later. Right now, I need you not to die and not to have brain damage."

 

He nodded and closed his eyes.

 

"What's the last thing you remember, Mulder?" she asked. "Do you remember being shot?" She paused, waiting for him to respond. "Being at dinner at Chez Jacques? Fighting with Will? Bringing Emily with you to pick me up after my last mid-term exam?"

 

"No," he whispered. He tried for several seconds to recall anything at all. "Em. Sick... In the hospital."

 

"That was two weeks ago. Is that the last thing you can remember?"

 

Mulder thought a moment. He pushed the tip of his tongue out as if lightly licking something and smiled.

 

"That's the last thing you remember?" she asked in disbelief.

 

"Was memorable," he murmured.

 

He heard a sound between laughter and tears. "Well, I have never been so happy to put a smile on your face. I'm going to go call Will and tell him his father is as normal as he ever was. Then I'll get the doctors. If a doctor asks the last thing you remember, please tell him it’s Emily having pneumonia."

 

Mulder fell fast into the land of Nod. "I love you, Scully," he managed to whisper.

 

"I love you, too."

 

He let go of her hand, and drifted into the darkness.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Dana watched expressionlessly while the doctor cut through the layers of gauze on Mulder’s chest and left shoulder. The nurse paid to take care of him assisted. As the doctor worked, he explained to Mulder the nature of his injuries in simple terms. Two gunshots at close range: one through his shoulder, damaging nerves, muscle, and bone, and one next to his heart, damaging a main vessel. There would be incisions from surgery, as well. He said Mulder had many minutes without a heartbeat, and a large loss of blood, both equaling no oxygen to his brain.

 

"I'm not going to make spring training next year, am I?" Mulder said lightly.

 

"I don't think so, son," the doctor told him. "I think your playing days are behind you. If you'd been dating a teacher rather than a trauma nurse, we'd be putting you six feet under, so count your blessings," he advised. "She wasn't willing to let you go."

 

Mulder looked across the room at Dana. She crossed her arms and forced a tight smile. Mulder noticed ugly bruises around her wrist - what looked like finger marks. After a second, Dana uncrossed her arms and put her hands behind her back.

 

Mulder watched Dana's face as the last of the gauze was peeled away. She didn't flinch. The other nurse did, though.

 

"No infection. Nice, clean incisions," the doctor observed. "You heal remarkably quickly. Those drains will come out soon. We'll get another x-ray of the shoulder, make sure it's knitting. Keep an eye on your blood pressure. Start some physical therapy. Can you move your left hand for me? Not the shoulder. The hand?"

 

The nurse held his bare upper arm, keeping it motionless, as Mulder tried. His fingers remained motionless as well.

 

"Can you feel me touching your hand?" The doctor moved his hand to Mulder's forearm, tapping. "Here?" He tried to upper arm. "Here??"

 

Mulder shook his head. "My shoulder hurts." He started watching Dana's expressionless face again.

 

"But nothing from the shoulder down? No burning, tingling... Itching, even?"

 

"It's nice to have a matching set, but otherwise it might as well not be there."

 

"Be patient. Give it a little longer," the doctor encouraged him.

 

"How much longer?"

 

"Hard to say, son. Yesterday's headline in the Washington Evening Star was a quote from me saying your prognosis was grim. I'm still stunned you're not dead and you seem to have all your marbles. The arm is the least of your worries."

 

"I keep hearing that," Mulder responded.

 

The doctor gave him a hopeful smile, gave instructions on how to bandage him up, and left.

 

A tense silence remained.

 

"Days, weeks," Dana answered, returning to his bedside as the other nurse gathered gauze and tape. She readied a syringe and injected something into his hip. "Demerol," she told him. "It's difficult to predict with nerve damage, but if you're going to get feeling or movement back, it should start as the tissue heals."

 

She turned the crank to raise the head of his hospital bed. As she did, Mulder lifted his head to look at his chest and shoulder for the first time. "Jesus."

 

"It looks worse than it is." The head of the bed continued to rise. "We need you to sit up to get the bandages and sling back on, and you can lie down again. We'll let the Demerol kick in, first."

 

“What happened to your wrist?” Mulder wanted to know. “Wrists?” Bruises ringed both Dana’s wrists, and one forearm bore marks. Mulder looked down at his useless hand. His fingers matched those bruises.

 

“Nothing,” she responded brusquely. He continued to stare at her. Dana added unconvincingly, “An accident. You’re alive. That’s all that matters.”

 

Mulder looked away. He stared at the antiseptic white wall instead of Dana. "Aren't you an ER nurse?" 

 

"I am a jack of all trades this week."

 

"Let her do it," Mulder said gruffly. He nodded to the other woman. "It's not your job to take care of me."  

 

"Yes, it is," she said evenly. "Please cooperate. I don't want a wrestling match."

 

He felt the pain medication spreading through his body, pushing away hurt and clouding his thoughts. "It's a lousy job. The money's good, but I wouldn't sign up for that position either, Nurse Scully. In fact, I'd get as far away as I could."

 

"I'll take my chances." She kissed his temple and his forehead as he turned his face back to her. "Besides, I've already enlisted."

 

"Scully..." he said hoarsely, forgetting anyone else was present. He felt so, so frightened. Of dying. Of mysterious men in the darkness. Of being less than her Superman.

 

She tried to manage another smile for him, but faltered for a half-second and looked frightened too. "Everything's going to be fine," she promised, and he knew for sure she lied.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder opened his eyes to see William hovering beside the hospital bed, looking like he desperately wanted to do or say something but couldn't figure out what. "Hello, son," Mulder mumbled.

 

"Dad, how are you feeling?" Will asked nervously.

 

Mulder felt as though some giant creature had stomped his chest and shoulder and, vampire-like, sucked out 99% of his life energy. Then, batted him around as he lay dead, like a cat with a mouse. Instead, he told his son, "I'm okay, Will. How long have you been here?"

 

"Almost sixteen years. You had a few pints, there was a pretty waitress named Phoebe..." The boy still sounded anxious. "A classic love story unfolds."

 

"At the hospital, wise guy."

 

"On and off since you were shot. Frohike's been here, too."

 

"Doctor said I have a few pints of your blood in me."

 

William nodded.

 

"Along with Frohike's and some Colored blood."

 

"Neither of which will improve your taste in music or clothing. Dana said you were sitting up earlier."

 

"For a bit," Mulder responded. "They had to change the bandages. The doctor says I'm healing. Not gonna be good as new, but healing. Jury's still out on the arm."

 

"That's good," Will said quickly, hovering.  

 

Mulder reached up to rumple his son's dark hair. Will cultivated a high-maintenance style that puffed up in front and feathered together in the back which he called a 'duck tail' and Mulder called, 'you could really use a haircut, son.' 

 

"It's okay, Will." Mulder closed his eyes for a few seconds. Even something as simple as raising his arm was exhausting. "Gonna be okay."

 

Mulder heard the chair squeak beside his bed as Will sat down. "I'm sorry I said those things to you. About Dana."

 

"You're in luck, William. Whatever you said, I don't remember."

 

"What do you remember?"

 

"A gentleman doesn’t tell," Mulder mumbled. The tide of consciousness began to go out, but he held on long enough to say, “Dana has marks on her wrists, Will. Bruises she won’t explain. Did those men-”

 

“No.” The boy hesitated. “I think they would have, though. You told me to take Dana and Emily, and run, but Dana tried to go back. Those men had guns and kept looking at her, and she kept trying to make me let go. I didn’t mean to hurt her, Dad.”

 

“It’s okay, Will.” It took another breath before Mulder had the energy to add, “Good job, son.”

 

He felt Will's hand on his good shoulder, and he bent his arm up to rest his hand on his son's. Knowing Will was safe, Mulder let himself drift, resting. He wasn't sure how much time had passed when he heard Will say, "Dad?"

 

Mulder opened his eyes slowly.

 

"Dad, I have to go."

 

It had been daytime when he'd fallen asleep. Now the window looked dark. He wondered if Will sat there the whole day. "Are you okay, son?"

 

"I'm okay. Everyone's okay. The holiday's over. I have school in the morning."

 

Mulder shook his head slowly from side to side. "No. Tell Dana and Byers I want you here."

 

"Mr. Byers talked with Mother. I'll get my school work and kit, and I'll be back straight away. Tomorrow afternoon at the latest. Dana will stay with you tonight, and Mr. Frohike is going with me. There are police outside your room and around the hospital. No one is allowed in except your doctors and nurses, and family. Me, Dana. Grandmother Mulder, if she would come."

 

"Why?" Mulder asked. He hadn't known policemen guarded his room.

 

"Because someone tried to kill you. Until the police catch those men, they're keeping officers outside your room. Besides, there must be two thousand fans gathered outside the hospital, along with a reporter from every television station and newspaper in the country. If anyone asks, say Emily is your daughter. She can't see you otherwise, and she wants to see you. The police were giving Dana a hard time, but I talked with them. Emily is yours. Dad, do you understand?"

 

He nodded, exhaled carefully, and closed his eyes again. "I'd love to have a few little girls like her."

 

He wished he hadn't said that, but Will's voice answered, "I know," and Mulder felt a man's hand take his. "Love you, Daddy-O."

 

"Love you, son." He brought Will's hand up to his mouth and gave the palm a kiss before he pressed it to his cheek.

 

William, who didn't kiss anything less than a B-cup these days, squeezed Mulder's hand. The boy leaned forward and rested his forehead against Mulder's for a moment.

 

"When you see your mother, tell her I said I'm sorry."

 

Will sat back, still holding his hand. "For not dying? She's probably grateful. Who would Mother Dearest blame all her problems on if you were dead?"

 

It hurt too much to chuckle, but Mulder smiled. "For everything. Tell her she gave me something remarkable, and thank you. Say I owe her."

 

"Bloody hell - I will not. No good can come of that. You owe her? Dad, you must have some brain damage."

 

"Okay," Mulder conceded tiredly. "I'm never gonna leave you, baby boy. No matter what," he promised.

 

*~*~*~*

 

A few days later, Mulder sat propped up on pillows in the hospital bed, dozing on and off. Gauze still covered his chest and a sling immobilized his injured shoulder. The drains were out, lessening the pain, along with the catheter, lessening the embarrassment. Despite his protests he wanted another nurse, Dana had helped him shave and clean up, and put on a clean T-shirt and pajama bottoms. Mulder felt like a human being again. He looked down at his left arm. 'Move,' he commanded his fingers silently.

 

The fingers twitched.

 

Mulder’s doctor stopped by that evening and was stunned.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Nurse Scully appeared in the doorway, hands on her hips, and Mulder knew he was in Big Trouble.

 

According to Emily, there was in 'trouble' and in 'Big Trouble' with Mommy. 'Big Trouble' meant the tops of Dana Scully's ears darkened and someone might get her mouth washed out with soap. Plain old 'trouble' meant anything less, and Dana could be talked out of actual punishment if the offender promised they would never, ever do it again. This time they meant it. Really.

 

Mulder tried to warn William, but his son laughed hysterically as 'Anita Johnson' was summoned over the intercom; 'Hugh G. Rection' needed her urgently. Of her own accord, the unwitting operator announced Anita was to 'come immediately,' which Mulder thought either empty boasting or extremely high standards.

 

Nurse Scully marched into his hospital room and unplugged the telephone cord from the wall. She glared at the two of them. Mulder watched, fascinated how her face kept changing shapes and colors.

 

'I love you,' was what he planned to say, but it came out as "I rub you," which also sounded like a fine idea and made him start giggling again.

 

"Yes, Mulder, I know you love me," she said sternly. "You love me, you love your nurse, and you love the switchboard operator. I know you're bored, and I know you've had some pain medication, but what is wrong with you? William?"

 

Will pointed at Mulder accusingly, protesting his own innocence.

 

"Hello, Nurse Scully." Mulder noticed the outline of her nipple through her uniform. "Will and I were discussing girls."

 

"And?"

 

"We're for them," Mulder decided happily, still out of breath from laughing. "Though being against them is damn pleasant." He shivered, feeling cold and clammy despite the extra blanket Will got for him.

 

"No more phone calls, Mulder," she ordered. "I'm trying to work."

 

"That was Will." Mulder conversed with her breast. He wondered if it was permissible to lick it under these circumstances. No, probably not in front of William.

 

"I am an impressionable child," his son insisted.

 

"Mulder?" she tried.

 

"I rub you, Sculleee," he repeated.

 

"How much pain medication have you had?" she asked suspiciously, leaning over him. "Mulder, are you okay? Your lips are blue."

 

Mulder responded by pressing her nipple with his index finger as if it was a doorbell. “Ding, dong,” he intoned. He announced, "Did someone order a nurse?” and grinned at her stupidly. 

 

As she stepped back in surprise, cupping her breast, Will spewed Coca-Cola out his mouth and nose as he fell out of his chair laughing.

 

"It's not funny, Will. How much Demerol as he had? Mulder, how many pain shots have you had? Or did the nurses accidentally give you pills and a shot? Answer me, Mulder," she ordered. "Will?"

 

Mulder shivered again, starting to feel tired. He couldn't catch his breath; something heavy sat on his chest, preventing his lungs from expanding.

 

"I like him so much better like this," Will called from the floor. He coughed and tried to blow the remnants of soda out his nostrils. "I never dreamt Dad knew so many dirty limericks."

 

"You won't like it if he stops breathing." She reached for Mulder’s chart. "Demerol depresses respiration. How many shots has he had?"

 

"One." Will got up. "The nurse was here. Dad asked me to get her. He was in pain."

 

"Which nurse gave him the shot?"

 

Mulder, hearing the magic word and knowing the drill, obligingly shifted, pulled down the right side of his pajama bottoms to bare his backside, and passed out.

 

*~*~*~* 

 

Mulder’s head ached. His hand had an IV line in it again. The window of his hospital room was black. He had no memory of them, but according to Dana, twelve hours had passed. Dozens of policemen and doctors pooled in the hallway, but only Dana remained in Mulder’s hospital room. She’d been at his bedside when Mulder awoke, and she hadn’t budged.

 

Every breath hurt so badly he dreaded taking another.

 

"I did not," Mulder protested tiredly, staring up at Nurse Scully. He pulled the oxygen mask off his face. He lay flat on his back with orders not to even lift his head. According to Dana, after too much Demerol, doctors had to persuade his heart and lungs to continue functioning this morning. That involved some rough handling. "You're making that up."

 

"Arm down," Dana commanded. She put the oxygen mask back on his face and straightened the IV line.

 

She kept fixing things that didn’t need fixed without looking Mulder directly in the eye. He glanced at the men outside his room again. He sensed something wrong but, after so much pain medication, Mulder couldn’t think clearly enough to discern what.

 

"You did,” she insisted. “You mooned us both. I have no idea what you said to Will. There were prank calls and dirty limericks and something about rubbing girls and 'coming immediately' before you lost consciousness."

 

Mulder closed his eyes. He hated having his every bodily function questioned, charted, and discussed by half the hospital. Making a fool of himself and having no memory of it seemed unnecessary humiliation. Please God, don't let there be AP photographs. And, if he told Will any autobiographical stories, please let them be the ones where Mulder sounded like a heartless philandering drunk instead of a pathetic chump.

 

After a moment of thought, he asked, “Will it happen again? Is my heart too weak?”

 

He felt a sudden wave of emotion from Dana, the way people said animals sensed earthquakes.

 

“No. It won’t happen again. You're going home in the morning," she informed him firmly. "Mr. Frohike and the police chief talked with the doctor. He'd rather not move you, but they agreed you'll go home in an ambulance with a police escort, and I'll stay with you. The chief will put officers at the house and the doctor will make house calls."

 

"Am I being expelled?"

 

"No. No, Mulder." She shook her head.

 

As he started to speak, a nurse approached the room carrying a metal tray of food. Mulder recognized the woman. She’d been his nurse yesterday. Or the day before. Time became uneven when he slept through entire days.

 

“Stay away,” Dana ordered before the woman could cross the threshold. In what seemed two steps, Dana moved from beside Mulder’s hospital bed to the doorway, putting herself between Mulder and the nurse. “Get back.” If Dana had held a gun, the other nurse would have been in grave danger.

 

A policeman put his arm across the door, also blocking the nurse’s path.

 

The nurse offered the tray and said, “I thought Mr. Mulder might be-”

 

“Out,” Dana barked.

 

The officer apologized but guided the woman back.

 

From the hallway, a dozen anxious eyes focused on Mulder.

 

As Dana turned back toward the bed, Mulder observed quietly, “Would you like to tell me what’s happening or do you prefer to keep me guessing?” He took a cautious breath. “I’m guessing you’re taking me home to die.”

 

In a ragged voice, she insisted, “You’re not going to die, Mulder.”

 

“What’s wrong?”

 

She took his hand. Another pulse of threadbare fear passed from her body to his. "The bottle your nurse drew your Demerol out of this morning,” Dana said quietly, as if she told a secret, “The police called. It's four times the strength on the label. Two patients on this floor died today. Their autopsies are tomorrow, but all of you got Demerol injections for pain. If Will hadn’t been here or I hadn’t walked in, we’d have a third body in the morgue, and we would have assumed your heart failed. I don't think it was a medication mix-up, like I don't think those were muggers in the alley."

 

Mulder stared up at her. "You're serious?"

 

She nodded. "The solution comes in bottles labeled and sealed at the factory. The boxes of bottles are labeled and sealed at the factory. Different strengths are different colors so mix-ups don't happen. Your nurse didn't grab the wrong bottle, Mulder. Someone put a mislabeled bottle there and didn't care how many people they killed as long as you were one of them."

 

"This, this is when I'm supposed to say you're paranoid, isn't it? To stop listening to Frohike? Nothing bad is going to happen?"

 

She nodded again. As if needing something to do, Dana raised the oxygen mask enough Mulder could sip water from a straw as she held the cup.

 

"Who would want to kill me? Why?"

 

She set the paper cup on his nightstand. "I can take some time off from work, and I'll be finished with school for the semester in a week. Or you could get a private nurse from one of the agencies," she back-peddled.

 

"No, if you're willing to tolerate me, that's fine."

 

"I'll have to. I let you in once and now I can't get rid of you." She ran her fingers through his hair. "You keep following me home."

 

"Two patients are dead?"

 

She nodded a third time.

 

"Jesus, Dana."

 

She walked across the room, closed his door, and returned. Carefully, she sat on his hospital bed and laid down on his good side, her hand over his. She leaned against his right shoulder, and he put his chin on the top of her head.

 

"Will's okay?" he asked quietly.

 

"I don't think 'okay' is the right word. Will's passed out on the sofa in the nurses’ lounge. He was so upset the doctor sedated him."

 

“Shit,” Mulder told the wall. "And Emily?"

 

"With my mother. Emily won't stay with the sitter, and she keeps having nightmares. I've told her you'll be okay, but all she remembers is seeing you in the alley. She wants Will with her, but William wants to be here, and I thought seeing you unconscious would frighten her more. She wants to see you, and I was going to bring her this evening, but..." She interlaced her fingers with his, careful of the IV.

 

"And Dana?"

 

"We're going to be fine," she assured him rather than answering his question. "I'm going to take you home, make you comfortable. Everything's going to be fine."

 

Even she didn't sound as if she believed it.

 

"What happens when - whoever it is you think wants to kill me - what happens when they try again?" he asked.

 

She didn't answer. The clock in his room ticked, counting the seconds.

 

Mulder looked at the white wall a long time, still trying to get his hazy brain to work. The world seemed full of facts applicable to him only distantly. The shooting, the investigation, the crowd outside the hospital, his heart stopping this morning: all a film he watched. Even dying was an abstract concept.

 

Leaving Will, leaving Dana and Emily, though: that felt real.

 

Mulder wanted to tell Dana she was crazy. That he lay in a hospital bed, flat on his back with an arm that wouldn't work and wire holding his chest together because of a run of bad luck. The wrong place at the wrong time - two muggers hopped up on drugs and a tragic mistake at the Demerol factory. Something horrible happened to Dana and their babies last year - something not Dana's fault, but perfectly explainable. It was all perfectly explainable. No Them lurked in the shadows, playing God, giving life and taking life as They saw fit. Mulder wanted to tell Dana she was as paranoid as Frohike and Agent Dales but for the first time, he started to believe she wasn't.

 

He felt the eyes in the distance and threat of Death lurking with them. There would be a third attempt on his life. And a fourth, and a fifth, and however many it took. They had what They wanted from him. He was too close, too dangerous, and he would be eliminated. Some things, Mulder just knew.

 

He couldn’t hide or run away. Even if Mulder knew where to run or who to run from, he couldn't so much as sit up on his own.

 

The worst fear was the quiet, patient kind that sat in the corner, licking its chops.

 

"Dana, is the hospital chaplain here? Or a rabbi?"

 

She sat up. Mulder winced as the bed shifted.

 

"Probably. If not, we can call and have one come in. Which do you want?"

 

"Which do you want?" he asked.

 

Dana looked down at him as if not understanding.

 

"Call a rabbi," he decided. "Find a psychiatrist or a neurologist. Maybe one of each. A couple doctors who can testify I'm capable of making decisions. Find me paper, a clipboard, a pen, and a couple of witnesses. Try to wake up Will. I want to talk to him."

 

"Why?" she asked softly, looking uneasy.

 

Mulder felt again how tired and frightened she was, as if her body was his. Ani l'Dodi, v'Dodi li.

 

He touched his tongue to his dry lips. "Handwritten wills are valid. In fact, the shortest one on record is 'all to wife' written on an Englishman's barn wall as he died. They had to haul the boards into court, but the will held up. Let's see if we can make things more portable for you, though." He took a careful breath, so wanting to sleep. "If you're right, sooner or later, you won’t be there to save me. Maybe the third time's a charm. If you're wrong..." He shrugged but wished he hadn't. "You're set when your brother Bill kills me."

 

She started shaking her head.

 

"It's a lot of money,” he told her. “I want you and Em to be comfortable. I want Will with you."

 

"You are not going to die, Mulder." She started to get upset. He felt the ache of it, the shiver at her core. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you."

 

"That's a nice plan, but it's not working out, honey." He ran his thumb over her warm palm and the bruises on her wrist. "It's been a couple weeks since we brought Em home, right? Do you know, yet - about another baby?"

 

She shook her head again. "I don't think so."

 

"Were there other nights, after that one? I don't remember."

 

Her face darkened. "I'm not having this conversation with you."

 

He gave her a tired grin. "I promise it's not the least romantic marriage proposal I've made to a woman. The third time's a charm, Nurse Scully. Call a rabbi and let's see if we can manage to get hitched. And go get Will."

 

Dana stared down at him, looking exhausted and terrified. Her chin started to quiver. She exhaled and the quivering stopped. Again, Mulder felt it - like an ocean wave had hit a seawall. "No," she said firmly.

 

"No?"

 

"No. No, I won't marry you tonight. Or tomorrow or this week or this month. Not because you think you're going to die. Sorry, Mulder. You're going to have to stay alive and ask me again when you're better."

 

He stared back. "Well, shit," he said. "I'll see what I can do."

 

She got up, moving slowly so she didn't jostle him. "I'm going to check on Will, and I'll be back." She covered him with a blanket and turned off the light near his bed. "The police are right outside. Get some sleep."

 

"Hey, Dana." He turned his face toward her. It would be nice to go a whole week without someone trying to kill him. "Can I go home tonight?"

 

"I'll find your doctor and ask. Do you want something for pain?"

 

"Anything you can find that won't kill me." He didn't understand how he could hurt so badly and yet be so tired. He closed his eyes, expecting to hear her footsteps as she left.

 

"I'll always love Will and look after him. He's your son," her voice promised him from beside the bed. "Hell, he's practically you. I don't want money. I don't want to be a widow with your last name. I don't want to be comfortable and alone. I want you, Mulder."

 

"That's a romantic proposal, Scully," he mumbled.

 

*~*~*~*

 

End: A Moment in the Sun, Part III

 

A Moment in the Sun, part IV

 

*~*~*~*

 

Though their backgrounds and personalities differed wildly, Mulder and John Byers became close friends during WWII. They'd served as captains in the same battalion but also, aside from surviving Hell on Earth together, they were the two officers least likely to be found in the company of a lady while on a twenty-four-hour pass. According to Kinsey, the average soldier had sexual intercourse twenty-three times during WWII, and Lieutenant Melvin Frohike reported personally skewing up the average in the Pacific. Given Byers and Mulder remained in the single-digit club and someone had to hold up the top end of the bell curve, that might have been the unlikely truth.

 

John Byers spent every moment away from the fighting writing to or trying to telephone the center of his universe - his new wife. The romance should have lasted a weekend but remained strong after a decade. Susanne was a university student fleeing Hitler's campaign against Polish Jews. Byers was a newly minted attorney not sure how he landed in the middle of a war. They met Friday afternoon and married Saturday evening, and managed to hold on to their happily-ever-after.

 

Mulder, on the other hand, was married when he enlisted and remained married for several years thereafter - though Phoebe wouldn't see him or let him see Will, and called the London police the last time Mulder had tried. Preferring complete emotional desolation and public humiliation to taking a gentle hint - like his wife petitioning for divorce on the grounds of cruelty, desertion, and adultery - Mulder spent his R&R time on public telephones still trying to 'win her back.' Eventually, the 'win her back' campaign dwindled to the “But I'm his father, Phoebs. Please. Put him on the telephone. Please. No, I don't believe Will won't talk to me. He'll talk to anyone. He'll talk to a ceiling fan. Please, honey,” campaign, also largely unsuccessful.

 

The Army expected Mulder and Byers to spend their time fighting Germans instead of trying to telephone England. Though lacking any military talent, Byers was unfailingly enthusiastic and patriotic. Someone had the foresight to give him command of a mobile radio unit rather than heavy artillery. Mulder wasn't so lucky, which contrasted problematically with his initial instinct to drop his rifle and run away as fast as possible. He arrived in Europe with the opinion 'courage' was an exalted synonym for 'a remarkable lack of imagination.'    

      

As WWII trudged through the invasion of Normandy and the liberation of Paris, and into Germany, passes became rare. When Mulder did get away from the fighting, Byers appeared in line for the telephone either in front of or behind him. The other GI’s roamed off in search of public intoxication, brawls, and an accommodating local lady, leaving Byers and Mulder to find affection via Ma Bell. After a great deal of pleading and promising on his part, Mulder held long, one-sided conversations with what might have been William or might have been a potted plant. Byers did his sweet-talking in faulty German, but didn’t sound any more intelligent.

 

As Mulder waited for his turn at the only working pay telephone left in Munich, Byers walked up behind him. Byers shrugged off a forty-pound field radio and sat down with a sigh.

 

In the awkward silence, Mulder fiddled with his dog tags. He ran his thumb over the indented letter P in the metal tags, the military code for 'Protestant.' There hadn't been a letter for 'well, my father's a lapsed Lutheran.' Mulder wanted an H, figuring that would cover 'Hebrew' as well as 'Hell if I know' and keep his mother from having a stroke. The other choices were C for 'Catholic' and a blank space meaning wolves raised him. Mulder put down h, choosing a diminutive lowercase to indicate his skepticism. That hadn't been acceptable to the Army either, and the harried man making the tags suggested listing Protestant since Mulder was headed to Europe. At the time, no one told him why he should be P rather than H to the Nazis; they gave him a rifle and taught him to point it at people.

 

Under his name and serial number, the year of his last Tetanus shot, and his blood type, the tags read 'Phoebe Victoria Mulder,' followed by her address in London. Phoebe would have danced on his grave in 1942, but hers was the only home address and next of kin Mulder could think to give when he enlisted. Only last year, after Will mentioned a 'new daddy' who lived with Mother, Mulder agreed to the divorce. Mulder had commemorated Will's 'new daddy' by getting drunk and making the carnal acquaintance of a series of French and German women to 'show Phoebe' - five times with four women before Mulder began to feel Phoebe was sufficiently 'shown.'

 

Mulder felt like he might need to show Phoebe again tonight though, to be thorough.

 

"Hello, Mulder," Byers said, drawing on years of Ivy League education to make such a profound statement. 

 

"Hello." Mulder added a nod to convey he'd studied psychology at Oxford and could nod with the best. 

 

"How long have you been in line for the telephone?"

 

"Long enough three men have deserted and one died of boredom." Mulder pointed at the field radio on which Byers sat. "What kind of reception do you get on that thing? I'll pay a dollar if you can get a call through to Boston for me."

 

"I still owe you three dollars," Byers answered.

 

Mulder said irritably, "This would lessen your tab."

 

"You're asking me to use a military radio for unauthorized civilian communication?"

 

"For a minute," Mulder promised.

 

“On a clear day, I can talk to London or North Africa with no problem, but Boston is asking a bit much. Besides, if I could make a civilian call, don’t you think I would?” 

 

Mulder looked at Byers dully.

 

Susanne carried twins. A letter from England had awaited Byers at HQ, and Byers said Susanne wrote the doctor was certain. Now - at least once the government let Susanne immigrate - Byers would go home to the States with his expectant wife. Start a family. Despite the horror Mulder and Byers left, Byers possessed a lifeline to the future only five hundred miles and a long-distance call away.

 

Habit urged Mulder to make some polite response, some acknowledgement, but his lips refused to move.

 

“I thought William was in London,” Byers asked after a stilted silence.

 

Mulder looked away. He patted down his uniform for the cigarettes he smoked in those days, though he knew he didn't have any. He stared morosely at the empty pack before he crumpled and threw it into one of the ruts the Allied tanks had made in the muddy street.

 

“Mulder, I would if I could,” Byers said earnestly. “I’m sure he misses his daddy.”

 

“I know.” William grew up in a war zone thinking his 'real daddy' lived inside the telephone, and Mulder couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

 

"The government says those things aren't addictive," Byers commented, as if noticing his foul mood.

 

Mulder shrugged. He tucked his dog tags down his olive drab T-shirt. As they waited, he leaned against the sooty brick wall of a burnt-out building. He watched the spring afternoon began to settle into the uncertain dusk.

 

Byers offered a stick of chewing gum so old it snapped as Mulder bit into it, but better than nothing. Mulder chewed morosely until his jaw began to ache. He pulled off his sweaty metal helmet. It too was olive drab, like his jacket, fatigues, his socks, and his boxer shorts. Whoever put up those 'Uncle Sam Wants You!' posters should clarify. Mulder enlisted thinking Uncle Sam wanted him to wear a pretty uniform, defend America, and wave proudly. Uncle Sam never mentioned wanting him to live on Spam and black coffee, sleep in a puddle with eight other GI's, or murder people. Going 'Above and Beyond the Call of Duty' was a different ballgame from 'shoot the enemy in the head at point-blank range.'

 

He'd become exactly the man he never wanted to be.

 

The phone line moved, and the column of men took two steps forward. Byers resettled his field radio and sat down on it again. Mulder found a new place on the wall to lean. Word filtered down the overseas operator allotted each man one minute for a call to the States, so Mulder started composing how he would tell his mother her sister, mother, and niece were dead in sixty seconds.

 

"Your wife's a Jew, isn't she?" Mulder asked, seeming to catch Byers off-guard.

 

"I gave you chewing gum, Mulder. Tell me I'm not about to hear a Polack joke," Byers answered warily.

 

In response, Mulder ran his finger down his nose and smirked.   

 

"Her family got out in time, before the resettlement camps. What about, um, yours?"  

 

"Death camps. Calling them 'resettlement camps' implies people weren't sent there to die. Settling involves building a house, raising a family, getting a dog. I didn't see any of that. What I saw was a hell of a lot of dead women's bodies."

 

"Yes," Byers had said for lack of anything more profound. "The war's over, Mulder. Whatever he did, Hitler's dead. We won. We're going back to Mom, apple pie, and ticker-tape parades. Provided they don't court martial us, all this will be a world away. Call your wife and son and tell them you're coming home. Then, let's go get a drink. Okay?" 

 

Mulder picked up his tags again, looking at them rather than answering.

 

*~*~*~*

 

"Shush," Dana Scully's voice soothed him. "You're having a dream. You need to be still."

 

"Open the boxcars." Mulder struggled to get up. "Oh my God. They're dead. What did they do? Byers-"

 

"Easy, big guy. Relax," she told him. "You need to stay flat."

 

"Shoot them," he ordered. Mulder raised his rifle, took aim, and pulled the trigger.

 

Nothing happened.

 

He cleared the round from the chamber and tried again.

 

Nothing.

 

"Mulder, be still," Dana's voice insisted. "No one's dead. It's a dream."

 

He opened his eyes, blinking in confusion. "They are dead. All of them," he said as her face came into focus, not certain what was happening. He felt nauseated, and it hurt to breathe. "We're too late."

 

"No one's dead, Mulder. I'm right here. Will and Emily are downstairs with Mr. Frohike. Everyone's fine. It was a dream." Dana sat on the edge of his bed and took his hand. "Do you understand? You're awake. You're safe. It's four in the afternoon. You came home from the hospital this morning."

 

Across the bedroom, Mulder saw the naked, pregnant women watching him from inside the dim boxcar. "I'm sorry," he told them helplessly, his heart pounding.

 

His cousin Ayla’s blonde hair was easy to spot, and his aunt stood with her. Both had hollow cheeks and jutting collar bones, but swollen breasts and protruding bellies. They covered their naked breasts with their hands and turned away, ashamed. Mulder saw his grandmother, who should have been long past childbearing years. He spotted Samantha in the corner of the boxcar, alone, now a young woman. Sam squatted down with her arms wrapped around her bare body, sobbing, terrified. Mulder couldn't tell if Sam was expecting or not, but nearby, Dana was. Naked, Dana looked gaunt yet ponderously pregnant - too big for one baby.

 

"Sam! Samantha, come here." He tried to extend his hand. His arm wouldn't move. "Scully, help her," he pleaded. "Can you help her? Can you run? You have to get out. All of you have to get out and get away."

 

He saw Dana look behind her and at him again, not seeing what he saw.

 

"They're going to kill you and your babies. Get out!" he ordered Sam.

 

"Mulder, you're hallucinating. It's the medicine. Samantha's not here. There's no one here but you and me." She turned on the lamp beside his bed.

 

"She's in the boxcar with you. Sam's right behind you."

 

"She's not. She's not here. I promise."

 

He struggled to catch his breath as his chest exploded with pain. He still saw Sam, but he couldn't get to her. As he watched his sister slip away, he sniffed, his face contorting. The image of Dana, naked, skinny, pregnant, faded. He was tired and afraid and he hurt so badly, body and soul.

 

"Easy. Slow breaths," Dana prompted.

 

Mulder stared at the women's gaunt faces as they blended into the darkness and vanished. Once they were gone, he looked up at Dana, struggling not to cry.

 

"It's okay." She stroked his face, wiping away the tears. "Look at me. I'm right here. You're safe."

 

He took a shuddery breath, and asked hoarsely, "You're okay?"

 

"I'm fine. I'm not the boxcar anymore. I'm okay."

 

"The babies are okay?" He wanted to touch her and reassure himself the little girls were safe inside her, but she held his right hand and his left arm wouldn't move. "Dana?"

 

She hesitated. "Try to relax. Slow breaths. I have pills for you, but they're downstairs. You have to calm down so I can go get them."

 

He nodded. And sniffed again. "I shot the dogs." He closed his eyes but kept hold of her hand to anchor himself. "All of them. They’re dead. The guards and the dogs."

 

"What dogs?"

 

"We found a train in the camp. With dead women inside. Untermenschen."

 

"I don't know that word."

 

"Female subhumans," he translated literally. "Jewish women. I didn't tell Mutter they were pregnant. I said they were dead. They were all dead. Maybe the old women were starving. I don't know; I'm not a doctor. After we opened the boxcars- We shot the guards. Then I shot the guard dogs." Their CO had assumed the guards fired on the American GI’s first, and frankly, no one in the Army HQ seemed interested in the truth.

 

"Your cousin and aunt were pregnant when you found their bodies?”

 

He nodded again. “All of them were."

 

"All the Jewish women in the boxcars were pregnant?" Dana asked. “Mulder are you sure? How many women were there?

 

"Thousands."

 

"My God," he heard her say under her breath.

 

There was a long silence before light footsteps approached in the hall. He closed his eyes, exhausted. "I'm sorry, Scully. I tried to stop them," he told her softly. "I thought I did."

 

"I'm not a Jew," her voice said, as if telling a secret.

 

"I am."

 

"Mommy?" Emily's voice asked.

 

"I know you tried," Dana said. "I'll keep watch for the bad guys this time. Everything's under control; trust me. You're safe. I'm safe. Everyone's safe. I'll be right back with those pills. Rest, big guy," she ordered, and ushered her daughter out.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder had difficulty convincing Dana to let him go to the bathroom by himself, so he wasn't surprised to wake to find her in bed next to him during the night. Mulder was beneath the blanket, but Dana lay on top. She slept in one of his T-shirts with her head nestled against his good shoulder. Her legs and feet were bare, and the thin cotton shirt left little of her breasts to the imagination. Her damp hair smelled like rain and shampoo.

 

Mulder shifted, winced, put his arm around her, and relaxed again into an opiate fog.

 

"Are you going to die?" Emily's voice asked softly. "Mulder?"

 

He opened his eyes. Emily stood a few feet away, wearing her pajamas, watching them. "No, honey. No, I'm not going to die."

 

The lamp on the nightstand remained on, but he couldn't turn his head to see the clock behind him. He saw Emily briefly the previous day, but before that it had been... Weeks. Probably not weeks, but he couldn't remember specifically the last time he talked with her.

 

"The ambulance men said you were going to die," she informed him. "Mommy said you weren't."

 

"Your Mommy's smarter."

 

He hated to wake Dana for guidance, but he wasn't sure what he should do or say. Emily didn't seem surprised to find her mother in his bed. Mulder had wanted Dana and Emily to stay at his house after Emily came home from the hospital; perhaps they had. Perhaps he and Dana slept together every night, and Mulder didn't remember.

 

Mulder hated he couldn't remember. He hated he couldn't raise his arm. He hated he couldn't breathe without morphine without hurting. He hated, despite what Dana kept saying, he couldn't keep his family or himself safe.

 

Emily continued watching him, seeming to take stock. Dana slept on. Mulder thought about asking Emily if she was allowed to sleep with them. If he and Dana were a 'them,' even, or if Mommy had her own bed at Mulder's house.

 

"Mommy was crying."

 

He raised his hand from Dana's back and beckoned Emily. "Come here, honey. Come sleep here for a bit."

 

The bed shifted as Emily climbed up, and he flinched again.

 

So did Emily.

 

"It's okay. I'm sore." Mulder raised his hand to touch his shoulder and chest. "Here and here. It hurts if I move, but I'll heal. It takes time."

 

She nestled next to Dana, comforted. "Why did he shoot you?"

 

He rested his hand on her head. "I don't know, honey."

 

"You're not my real daddy, are you?"

 

"No, Em, I'm not." He wondered why children couldn't ask him these questions while he was awake and had all his faculties. "I'm Will's daddy."

 

A tall silhouette appeared in the doorway, checking on them.

 

"Bubby cried, too," she told Mulder confidentially.

 

Mulder’s heart beat faster. "I bet he doesn't like you telling on him."

 

Mulder wanted to pull the covers over Dana, but couldn't. 

 

The last time Will walked in on Mulder and a woman... Mulder hadn't been sober and the woman hadn't been Dana. More than a year ago. Since Mulder couldn’t scramble up and make excuses this time, he said, "Are you okay, baby boy?"

 

"I'm feeling left out," Will answered with gentle sarcasm. He stepped into the bedroom. "I was not invited to this slumber party."

 

"It was impromptu. Do you need anything, Will?"

 

His son snickered, took a blanket from the foot of the bed, and draped it over Dana. "I think the question is, 'Do you need anything, Daddy-O?'"

 

"Since you asked... Those big pain pills Dana keeps feeding me? Don't wake her but find them and feed me some before my chest starts screaming."

 

"I can do that. Do you need anything else?"

 

"Get Dana to hire a nurse. Or two. She's exhausted. Have the maid come more often," Mulder listed quietly. "Have Frohike put some bodyguards outside. Do whatever Dana tells you to do. Hang around for the next few weeks so I know you're okay. Stay away from girls until you're twenty-five. If someone tries to kill me again, you grab Dana and Emily and do exactly what you did before: get the three of you somewhere safe. Promise me, son?"

 

“I promise,” the boy answered softly. Regaining his cool persona, he said, "No guarantees on the girls, but I'll see about the nurse and the maid. There are bodyguards outside, and police. Frohike's asleep in his truck in front of the house."

 

"Really? His ancient truck made it all the way from New York?"

 

Will nodded. "Frohike has a rifle, too."

 

"I'm touched. I think. I'm not sure if that makes me feel better or not," Mulder responded. "Are you okay, Will?"

 

"I'd be better if you'd stop dying in front of me, Daddy-O."

 

"Me too," Emily chimed in with her little voice.

 

"I'll see what I can do."

 

Dana shifted, putting her arm over Emily, and Mulder inhaled sharply. If Emily wasn't there, he'd have said a bad, bad word. Instead, he blew out slowly, which also caused pain but to a lesser degree.

 

"It hurts?" Will sounded less sure of himself. "Dad?"

 

"Yeah," he answered tightly. "Only if I breathe or move, though."

 

"I'll find those pills," his son promised.

 

"Hey, Will-" Mulder raised his left hand a few inches off his abdomen. Mulder slowly moved each finger and his thumb. He had to watch his hand and concentrate hard, but he could do it.

 

"Cool." William pointed at Emily. "You. You are a little tattle-tale, Squirt. You will pay."

 

Safe in Mulder's and her mother's arms, Emily stuck her tongue out at Will.

 

After Will brought Mulder the pills, and after Mulder started to drift into the velvet darkness, Mulder knew William stayed in the bedroom, sitting in the overstuffed leather chair beside the window, keeping watch.

 

*~*~*~*

 

That Saturday in December 1952 felt surreal from the moment they boarded the plane that morning, with Will's chattering folding into the roar of the jetliner's engines and the stewardesses' questions about coffee and their trip. Mulder was leaning on the morphine pills, but that hadn't been it, and nothing unusual weighed on his mind. He'd felt inexplicably distracted, mentally off-balance. Even years later, his memories of the day seemed like a movie with important parts cut from every scene and randomly left on the cutting-room floor.

 

A Cadillac limousine met them at the airport and conveyed them smoothly downtown. As Mulder watched the skyscrapers of the Motor City blur past - temples built to the gods of polished chrome and raw horsepower - he remembered thinking about his father, of all things. His father had loved cars. As soon as Henry Ford would part with one, Bill Mulder owned an automobile. When Mulder was eleven, his family had a Model A, and Mulder had been tall enough to operate it. Massachusetts was one of the first states to require drivers' licenses, but Mulder drove for years before he was old enough to send away for one. A Nash straight-eight went on the boat to England with him, and got replaced by the second-hand Alfa Romeo he owned when he met Phoebe. The sporty Alfa Romeo got sold to fund wedding rings, two tickets on the Queen Mary back to the States, and a small nest egg. Mulder had wondered if what infuriated his father wasn’t marrying Phoebe but selling the Alfa Romeo.

 

"Pretty, isn't it?" Mulder recalled saying as Will ran his hand over the fender of the new black sedan on display at the front of the lobby of the Cadillac building. Will was thirteen, almost fourteen, and big for his age. He'd gotten husky the previous year but lately, shot up. The baby fat melted away as his shoulders broadened and a shadow of dark hair appeared on his upper lip. "My father owned a Cadillac when I was about your age."

 

"Mother says I was named after your father."

 

"You were," Mulder confirmed. Mulder would turn thirty-eight in a month, and his father would be sixty-two. All their birthdays were in January: Mulder, Bill Mulder, and the grandson he'd never met.

 

The interior of General Motors headquarters was warm, and Mulder's right knee ached at the change in temperature from the Detroit winter outside. The incision remained red and ugly, but the surgeon was pleased with the results. Mulder liked being on his feet again - even temporarily. It was the left knee's turn after Christmas, to allow time to recover before spring training.

 

Heads turned in the lobby as people recognized Mulder, and he heard excited murmurs. In October, the Yankees won their fourth World Series in a row, beating the Brooklyn Dodgers. He hit .294 - not his best ever, but giving rookie Mickey Mantle a run for his money. Mulder’s face graced cereal boxes, little boys' lunchboxes, and magazine covers. In 1949 he was the first player to make $100,000, and for the upcoming 1953 season he signed for $120,000 plus bonuses, causing more headlines. Mulder felt the years beginning to creep up on him. Not just his knees, but also the way soreness lingered in his shoulders after a game and the half-second longer it took him to get under the ball in the outfield.

 

As a tall, pretty blonde secretary came to greet them, Will asked, "Dad, can you drive?" and it took Mulder a second to realize the question wasn't sarcasm.

 

"I could the last time I checked," Mulder answered. "Which was about the time you were born." He opened the driver's side door so Will could slide behind the wheel. "But I've never driven anything like this. The transmission's different."

 

"Will you be driving in the ads?"

 

"Frohike said they're doing print ads, so probably not. I may have to pretend while they take photographs, though. I'm not sure. That's what they're deciding today."

 

William put his hands on the steering wheel, clearly having inherited his grandfather's appreciation of the motor car. "I think you should be driving this one."

 

"An overhead valve V-8, automatic transmission, air conditioning, and power steering," the blonde secretary told them. "We also make a convertible, Mr. Mulder."

 

"Brilliant. We should get one," Will decided. "Wrap it up, please."

 

"Does it come with its own parking space in Manhattan?" Mulder asked as Will got out of the car.

 

She smiled politely and commented, "Handsome, athletic, and witty," as she took their coats and hats.

 

"I do try," Will responded, and Mulder chuckled.

 

Her smiled broadened and seemed more genuine. "Welcome to the Cadillac division of General Motors. This way please, gentleman." She turned away, her hips swaying and her high heels clicking across the marble floor. Her skirt and sweater were tight enough to accentuate her hips and breasts, but not vulgar. Mulder appreciated her figure while Will took a last look at the cars on display around them.

 

"How long will you be in Detroit, Mr. Mulder?" she asked while escorting them down a long concourse lined with ritzy boutiques.

 

"Until tomorrow morning. William has school on Monday."

 

"Is there anything I can arrange during your stay? A hotel? A dinner reservation?"

 

"We're at the Hotel St. Regis across the street, and we're probably having hot dogs for dinner."

 

Will added, "And a milkshake."

 

"And milkshakes," Mulder amended. "We live the high life. Thank you, though."

 

He recalled thinking the pretty secretary had a pretty smile, and her hand lacked an engagement or wedding ring. Unfortunately, Will chose the moment to announce, "Dad thinks he saw a foo-fighter this morning."

 

"Really?" she said without missing a beat. "A flying saucer? Not ball lightning or St. Elmo's fire?"

 

"Ball lightning is often incorrectly identified as St. Elmo's fire, but they're separate and distinct meteorological phenomena. I got a book about unusual weather events from the public library," Mulder explained. "I saw something off the plane's wing. A flash of light."

 

He'd seen it several times out of the corner of his eye, and asked if Will could see it, too. They traded seats and William watched out the window and - though he saw only the top of the clouds - decided it was one of the mysterious German aircraft the Allied troops reported during the war.

 

"It was St. Elmo's fire, Will," Mulder said. "Which is still noteworthy: a build-up of electricity on the wing. Although, if it wasn't, I should have told someone. Ohio could be under attack by Nazi aircraft or flying saucers."

 

"I hope space aliens aren't invading. I made an appointment to have my hair done," she said dryly.

 

Mulder shoved his hands in his trouser pockets, grinned, and decided he might be a little in love. Or at least, lonely, taking morphine, and momentarily in lust.

 

She pushed the button to call for the elevator. "I recommend American Coney Island on Lafayette; they're the best hot dogs in the city."

 

"I-I like the irony of flying from New York to Detroit to eat hot dogs at a place called American Coney Island," Mulder told her. "You're a local girl?"

 

"Born and raised. I can tell you the best blues club, who makes the best cocktails, and where to buy a nice scarf to take home to your wife. Or I can have the scarf gift-wrapped and delivered to your hotel, if you like."

 

"My parents are divorced," Will chimed in helpfully.

 

The Colored elevator operator gave Mulder a wink as they boarded, but since he wasn't spoken to, didn't speak. The man had a small notebook and a pen ready in his hand, which he didn't offer until Mulder noticed and reached for them. Even as Mulder autographed the notepad, the old man glanced at the blonde secretary worriedly.

 

"I'm not gonna tell anybody, Joe," she assured him. "See if you can get him to sign two. My nephew is a huge Yankees fan.” She explained to Mulder, “There was a memo yesterday; we're not to ask for autographs."

 

"I'm a Tigers man myself," the old elevator operator said, addressing her and keeping his eyes down. "But my boy, I took him to a game and he got dazzled by all those New York Yankee pinstripes. I keep telling him have faith; we're gonna rally."

 

"Any year now," Mulder teased him. The Detroit Tigers had been on a downhill slide for a decade and just finished their worst season ever. "Your Virgil Trucks got three fastballs past me last August, though. Struck me out. If you see him, tell him don't get cocky; it's not going to happen again."

 

"Yes sir," Joe replied. "I'll tell him."

 

The conversation continued, but Mulder felt a headache coming on. For a moment, the sound of Will's and the secretary's voice was far away. He saw a glint of light off the inside of the brass elevator doors - a bright white flash, and another one. He stared at them, mesmerized.

 

"Daddy-O? Dad?" Will's voice brought him back to reality. "Are you all right?"

 

His son, the secretary, and Joe watched him. The elevator had stopped, and several seconds must have passed. Mulder still held the fountain pen and the notepad. He looked down and discovered he'd turned to a second page, but instead of signing his name, he'd written '22.12.12' and 'Kampf gegen die Zukunft' - Fight against the future. Embarrassed, Mulder tore the page out, shoved it in his pocket, and autographed a new sheet, 'To Joe - Have faith.'

 

"Mr. Mulder?"

 

"I'm okay," he assured them as he signed his name. "My knee - it's still healing, and the walking and the cold don't help."

 

"Do you need to sit down?" she asked.

 

"No." He shook his head, getting the pressure to lessen. He took a deep breath as he gave the pad and pen back to the Colored man. "I'm okay."

 

The elevator doors opened to an ornate hallway, and the secretary preceded them. "William, I'd be happy to give you a tour of our headquarters while your father is in his meeting. Or we could find something else to amuse you."

 

Mulder looked at her evenly, making it clear all amusement afforded his teenage son better be wholesome.

 

She nodded almost imperceptibly. "I'd show you the assembly line, but it's Saturday, and it's more exciting if the men are working. And it's a lot of walking. Maybe the next time you're in town, so your father can come along."

 

"That would be brilliant."

 

"It would," Mulder agreed.

 

"It's a date. Right now, take it easy." She looked at Mulder and offered obliquely, "Stay off your feet this evening."

 

"It's hard to do that and keep up with Will at the same time."

 

"I'm sure. They're waiting for you in the boardroom, Mr. Mulder," she said, gesturing gracefully to the first open door. "Please let me know if there's anything I can do to make your stay in Detroit more enjoyable."

 

"Start by telling us your name."

 

She covered her face with her hand. "How embarrassing. I thought I was being so poised and professional. The memo said to be friendly but professional."

 

"I think you have the 'friendly but professional' part down. If I knew your name, I could get a rain check on the blues club," Mulder said, "for the next time I'm in town. When you're on your own time and I'm on mine."

 

Mulder liked her, but he knew the fringe benefits of celebrity and big business deals. The secretary was likely on the menu. If not, another beautiful woman would be, courtesy of the advertising agency. Drinks, dinner, dancing... Everything Mulder said to her would be riveting and charming. The girl was a nice girl - went to church, didn't kiss on a first date - but would end up in his bed. Professional baseball came with the same type of women; they just didn't pretend to be nice girls. Mulder knew what the blonde secretary was, but he thought he detected a spark beyond that. However, if her job involved being whatever Mulder wanted, perhaps she was good at her job.

 

"Anything you like," she promised.

 

"My name is Fox Mulder. This is my son, William," he prompted.

 

She hid her face again, and her cheeks darkened all the way down her neck. "Rita. Miss Rita Covarrubias," she managed, and shook their hands.

 

"Covarrubias? Like the artist?"

 

Seeming surprised, she answered, "Yes. My goodness. Flying saucers, St. Elmo's fire, and Miguel Covarrubias in less than ten minutes. An impressive collection of knowledge for a baseball player, Mr. Mulder."

 

He gave her a crooked grin.

 

"Would it impress you to know his shorts have 'Dad' written in them?" Will asked, and Mulder got a turn at embarrassment as she struggled not to laugh.

 

"Because you wrote it," Mulder defended himself.

 

Will had shrugged innocently, but then grinned wickedly.

 

As she walked away, Mulder asked his son, "Was that absolutely necessary, William?"

 

"It was." Will leaned closer. In a whisper, he suggested to his father, "We should get one of those, too."

 

Mulder snickered. The Cadillac sedan downstairs was probably far less expensive in the long run.

 

Frohike waited in the boardroom, along with two of Cadillac's ad men. A half-dozen executives in gray flannel suits stood beside a long table. 'Elegance in Motion' the poster board on the easel read, with a sketch of Mulder in a tuxedo opening the car door for a woman in an evening gown. A spotlight shone behind her, back-lighting the car and concealing her identity. A second mock-up read 'More Eloquent than Words' and featured Mulder in a dark suit, leaning on a convertible while the sun set behind him. A woman stood in the corner of the drawing, silhouetted by the sun. He glanced at several other easels, but Mulder liked the first two best - in the unlikely event he got a vote.

 

Mulder had done product endorsements before, but these executives wanted to meet him, to “get a feel for him,” as Frohike put it. For the amount of money they paid Mulder to be photographed with their car, that request seemed reasonable. In these meetings, Frohike did most of the talking while Mulder sat, kept his mouth shut, and looked bankable.

 

At one in the afternoon, someone poured him a double Scotch. A good double Scotch. The pressure in his forehead began to build again.

 

After hands were shaken and seats taken, the ad men began their presentation. Will looked interested, but Mulder's head ached and his attention drifted; he remembered snatches of conversation. Words starting with 'E' equated with wealth. The nation-wide campaign would launch in late winter and run through fall. They'd like to do print and radio ads, and considered television.

 

Mulder found himself looking at the windows across the boardroom, watching the light play against the glass and letting his mind wander wherever memory pulled it.

 

The Model A was practically indestructible, but Mulder’s mother's nerves weren't. When Mulder drove Mutter, his father warned him to go slowly and 'Sei kein Idiot' - don't act like a fool. If Mulder drove Samantha, though, he drove the Model A like any boy would, with Sam hanging on for her life, squealing, and urging him to go faster. The car could ford a creek, clear a fair-sized stump, beat Horace Decker's automobile to the end of the lane, and go backward quicker than a mean bull could charge forward - all on the way home from Samantha's ballet lesson.

 

In the spring of 1929, Mulder’s father arrived home in a blue Cadillac convertible with whitewall tires and a big engine that purred up the driveway to their house in Boston. Everyone went for a ride with Vater: first Mutter, then Mutter and Sam, and Samantha and Mulder while their mother put the finishing touches on dinner. They made a big loop around the neighborhood, with neighbors coming out on the porches to admire the fancy new car. Half-way through the second lap, his father stopped the car and told Mulder to get behind the wheel. Mulder remembered being nervous - excited but worried about damaging the car or disappointing his father. Mulder sat in the driver's seat for a long time looking over the row of fancy knobs and dials. The Cadillac was twice the size of the Model A and twice as powerful. His palms sweated and his stomach knotted. He'd been thirteen-years-old: old enough to start to look like a man, but not to be one.

 

"Go on, Fox," he heard Samantha's voice urge him. He was her big brother, and in her mind, capable of anything.

 

His father rested his arm across the back of seat, rustled Mulder's wavy brown hair, and said encouragingly, "You can do it, son. Go on. You'll do fine."

 

Mulder saw a flash of light outside the windows, like the sun glinting brightly off another building. He flinched, but no one else seemed to see it. Instantly, the pressure inside his forehead subsided. His knee still ached, and he felt the morphine and the alcohol, but his mind cleared.

 

His glass tumbler sat empty. On the pad of paper in front of Mulder, in his handwriting, was 'Jenseits der Wahrheit.' I want to believe.

 

Mulder tore the sheet of paper off, folded it, and added it to the one in his pocket. The morphine made him sensitive to light, but he only took the one pill this morning. It could be the start of a head cold aggravated by the pressurized cabin of the plane and the warm office building. Mulder could be having a stroke for all he knew. Whatever was wrong with him, if it didn't stop, he would see a doctor.

 

One of the junior executives refilled his drink. Mulder downed another pain pill with a mouthful of Scotch. He noticed his son watching worriedly.

 

Mulder put his hand on Will's shoulder and focused his attention on an advertising executive, who asked about putting William in the ads: a wealthy father and son at the country club. Will perked up, but "No," was Frohike's answer, not even bothering to check with Mulder.

 

Mulder shook his head, and Will went back to sipping his Nehi.

 

Ten minutes later, the boardroom door opened and the blonde secretary entered, looking worried. The advertising men continued their presentation as Miss Covarrubias whispered in a senior Cadillac executive's ear. The man nodded, glanced at Mulder, and gestured for her to convey the message to Frohike. She did. Frohike whispered back. She stood at the back of the room, waiting.

 

Mulder looked at her and at the man chairing the meeting. "In your sketches, the location and woman's face are obscured," Mulder said, speaking for the first time since they sat down. "Will it be that way in the photographs, as well?"

 

The young ad man - the one who asked about Will - at the end of the table looked puzzled. "Why?" he asked, drawing out the word.

 

"If all you see is the man and the car, a customer can better project himself into the ad. The woman could be any woman. She could be his girlfriend, his wife, his lover, his daughter. They could be on a first date, on the way to a party, or stealing away for a tryst. Anything he wants, anyplace Cadillac can take him."

 

"These are sketches from the art department. They're to give everyone an idea what the campaign will look like." The man replied as if explaining to a child.

 

"But the artist made them ambiguous, consciously or subconsciously. America is a young country. People come here to re-invent themselves and create their own future. They determine their own identity and destiny. If Cadillac is the pinnacle of that, why not let your customers invent their own American dream instead of trying to dictate it to them?"

 

The ad man looked at Mulder with his mouth agape. "I was unaware we were in the presence of Sigmund Freud," he commented sarcastically. "We should print 'Cadillac' under some inkblots and go home."

 

From the other side of William, Frohike gave Mulder the 'let me take over' signal.

 

"Not unless you want your customers buying butterflies, vampire bats, and female genitalia," Mulder responded, and Frohike looked pained. "You're hiring me to sell cars. I'm trying to help you do that."

 

"We don't need your help, Mr. Mulder. All we need you to do is keep your nose clean, show up next month, and have your photograph taken."

 

Frohike signaled again and had his mouth open to speak, but the senior ad man intervened, saying, "The common man identifies easily with you, Mr. Mulder. We've conducted scientific studies. You're what each of us want to be, only better. Yes, we could easily sell you and the car, and let customers fill in their own details. Invent their own the American dream, as you put it. The slogan: 'Anything you want, anywhere Cadillac can take you' - that's good. Different from what we've done in the past, but very good."

 

The car executives nodded in agreement. They frowned at the young ad man, who looked flushed and huffy.

 

Frohike cleared his throat, said everyone was on the same page, and if there was nothing else, they'd see each other at the photo shoot after the holidays.

 

After some whispering from across the table and a few more looks at Mulder, the Cadillac men politely excused themselves. As the two ad men gathered their props, Frohike said hesitantly, "Mulder-"

 

"My father is dead," Mulder supplied for him.

 

Frohike probably assumed Mulder overheard Miss Covarrubias whispering, but he hadn't. Mulder had just known. He felt empty, like the eye of a storm, and he liked it.

 

"Yes. I'm sorry."

 

Mulder took a slow breath. He finished his second drink in one swallow.

 

His son bit his lower lip. The secretary came forward and put her hand on Will's shoulder, looking convincingly comforting. "I've called the airport," Miss Covarrubias said. "Our private plane will be ready within the hour. We'll have you in Massachusetts by dusk. Mr. Mulder, I am sorry."

 

"We're going to drive." Mulder had enough people arranging his life; he wanted to control something, even if it was an automobile. It was seven hundred miles to Boston, and maybe he'd feel something besides hollow by the time he got there. He should grieve. What son didn't grieve his father's death? "You and me, Will," Mulder clarified before Frohike could volunteer to play nursemaid. "Which means you're gonna miss school, your mother's gonna be unhappy, and I'm gonna need a car. You liked the one in the lobby?"

 

The secretary said, "If you do, I know where we keep the keys."

 

During his next trip to Detroit, Mulder learned Rita Covarrubias was the niece of the man who owned the hotdog place, and her father was a foreman on the assembly line. Either claim might or might not have been true. She graduated from a local high school, went to church, and didn't kiss on a first date. They never made it to the blues club, but Mulder invited her for a drink after the photo shoot. For the first time in years, he invited a woman upstairs for a nightcap. Then - since by that time his knees had matching incisions - he took Rita up on her offer to help him stay off his feet. “Room service” she called it, and he tried not to think of how many other men she serviced. He told himself a good time was had by all. That night, and during his next trip, and the next.

 

'Anything you want, Anywhere Cadillac can take you' became the slogan for the new campaign. They did the print ads as Mulder suggested, and even talked him into some radio spots, recording the phrase as many times as necessary until he read the lines without stuttering. Thankfully, he never had to sit through another meeting, but Frohike told him Cadillac sales rose 23% in 1953.

 

Two days after the meeting in Detroit, in Boston, Mulder introduced Will to Grandmother Mulder. They buried Grandfather Mulder and whatever secrets died with him.

 

The flashes of light and the headaches never returned. Mulder saved those slips of paper with the numbers and phrases on them for a year, trying to figure out what they meant. Mulder never had, and one day the maids at The Plaza threw them away, thinking they were trash. By then, he'd decided the maids were right.

 

*~*~*~*

 

"Still Sunday," Dana told Mulder as soon as he opened his eyes and before he had to ask. "Eleven thirty-five on Sunday morning, December 5, 1954."

 

The bedroom fireplace crackled. The barely-touched breakfast tray had disappeared from the dresser. Dana wore a dark blouse and loose trousers, and her hair looked hurriedly pulled back. Her face was free of make-up. "You're home. You're awake," she confirmed. "How are you feeling?"

 

He blinked a few times, getting his bearings. "I hate those pills. I hate sleeping all the time, and I hate my brain being in a fog. Aside from that and-" He gestured to his chest. "I guess I'm fine."

 

Mulder lay propped up on pillows. Dana adjusted them and gave him a glass of water. Once he’d emptied the glass, she let him put it on the nightstand himself, using his sore chest muscles. Mulder took her hand and pulled her toward him, getting his good mid-morning kiss.

 

"You were speaking German, but it didn't sound like a nightmare so I let you sleep. Were you dreaming about the war again?"

 

"My father. My parents spoke German at home. My mother still speaks German at home," Mulder corrected. "She hasn't called, has she?"

 

"I've left messages with her housekeeper, and Mr. Frohike has left messages, but we can call again."

 

"Maybe I'll call her tonight."

 

There was a radio and a television set in the bedroom, and Dana brought Mulder the newspaper, but he struggled to focus his attention or stay awake for long. Frohike stopped by to keep him company, the doctor made house calls, and Will and Em came in and out. The bell on the bedside telephone was switched off, but Mulder heard it ringing off the hook downstairs. Dana would have him pick up when friends called: Byers, former teammates, even a WWII buddy who heard Mulder had been shot and whom Dana correctly assumed he'd want to talk with. He talked to Phoebe at some point about Will's school and Christmas; Mulder didn't remember the details, but did recall Byers told him not to speak with Phoebe again. Mulder heard Mrs. Scully's voice yesterday - or the day before - on the porch. If he sat in the chair beside the fireplace, he could see police and photographers on the front sidewalk. Mulder knew the world continued to turn, but it was a separate place. He slept a lot, ate if Dana insisted, and let her take care of the details.

 

Dana opened the top drawer of his nightstand and got out medical scissors and rolls of gauze. If it was Sunday, the doctor wouldn't be by, but the bandages still needed changed. "Do I have to?" Mulder asked regretfully. "Can't we skip a day? When I imagined playing doctor with you, this was not what it involved, Nurse Scully."

 

"You do have to." She picked up the scissors.

 

"Could you at least put on your uniform? With the white shoes and the little hat? No underwear. I wouldn't want you to go to any trouble."

 

Dana gave him a weary, bemused smile. "You'll have to use your imagination."

 

Mulder made a disappointed noise in the back of his throat. "I can do that by myself."

 

He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, relenting. He put his good hand on her leg as she worked, toying with the fabric of her slacks.

 

"Does 22.12.12 mean anything to you?" he asked.

 

"I'm going to need a clue," her voice answered, and he felt the cool air against his chest as she peeled the first layer of gauze away.

 

"I can tell you what it's not. There's no mathematical significance. It's not a telephone number or an address. Not an account number or a religious verse."

 

"The combination to a safe? How did you come by this number?"

 

Honestly?" He opened his eyes. "The day my father died, I wrote it without knowing it. Automatic writing, pyschography: unconsciously writing another person's thoughts. It's a verified psychic technique-"

 

"Verified by whom?" she wanted to know.

 

"I got a book about it from the New York Public Library," he insisted. "I wrote down 'Fight against the future. 12.22.12. I want to believe.' In German. In Germany, December 12, 1912 would be written 12.22.12. Except nothing important happened that day."

 

"But the future 12.22.12 would be December 22, 2012," she answered, but seemed momentarily uncertain. "By which time, we'll both be long dead. So I suggest you keep looking for a safe." She kissed the tip of his nose. "Are you interested in taking a shower before lunch?"

 

"Am I ever. Can I?"

 

"The incisions are closed. Don't do gymnastics or move your left shoulder, but you can get your chest wet. Those of us who live with you would appreciate you showering, in fact." She leaned closer and whispered in his ear, "You smell bad."

 

"Thanks."

 

She put the sling back on his arm to keep it in place, tied the straps, and nodded he could get up. Dana offered her hand and he took it, using his good arm to pull as he sat up. Even with the pain pills, it hurt to move. Mulder waited a second before he swung his legs over the side of the bed. He was bare-chested and barefooted, wearing his pajama bottoms. He eased to his feet, and she held his hip and right hand until he had his balance.

 

"Spring training, here I come."

 

"Start with making it to the shower." She stepped back, keeping an eye on him.

 

"Are you coming along to help?"

 

"No gymnastics in the shower," she repeated. "I'll help if you need me, though."

 

"You might not be dead," he told her as she walked him to the bathroom. He still thought about the numbers and German phrases. "December 22, 2012. You're younger than I am. You might be alive, Scully, but very old.”

 

She pushed the wall switch. As the light flickered on, he saw a man in the mirror with a broad slash down his chest. There were old bruises from his throat to the bottom of his ribs and the tic-tack-toe of scars on his left shoulder. Even with the sling covering some of the incisions, it was still horrible. His hair looked dirty and flattened. There was stubble on his cheeks, but Mulder kept staring at the scars. He brought his right hand up, touching the worst of them.

 

"Jesus."

 

"Mulder, they're better," Dana assured him, but her voice sounded far away.

 

His reflection had a column of round wounds on each jaw. Mulder didn't remember them being there, or Dana doctoring them, but he saw them in the mirror. In the mirror, he looked like a dead man. He touched his face, feeling the roughness of his beard. His reflection was clean shaven. In the mirror he saw a hole in his palm, like a spike had been run through it. It didn't seem real, but he wouldn't be seeing it if it wasn't. He held up his right hand, examining it in the light. If he looked directly at it, it was his hand. Reflected in the mirror, he saw the ragged wound in the palm and the gray tint of the skin. The fingernails were blue, like a corpse.

 

He heard water running, pattering down against the shower tiles. Dana's voice invited, "Come on. You'll feel better once you're clean."

 

Maybe Mulder saw what he really was. Maybe the doctor in the hospital had been right: Mulder was dead, but she wasn't willing to let him go.

 

"You're pregnant." He turned to look at Dana. The word sounded vulgar coming out of his mouth, but he felt certain she was. Not a little pregnant, either. Any-day-now pregnant, and it puzzled Mulder he couldn't tell as he looked at her.

 

"I'm not."

 

He smirked tiredly, watching his reflection. "You'd think a doctor could figure out she's pregnant, Scully."

 

"I'm not." She sounded hurt. "I wish- I wish you'd stop saying that."

 

"I'm sorry," he said flatly. There had been so much at stake, but he failed her, failed his child, and failed his father. Failed his sister. Mulder felt the same disjointed emptiness as the day his father died - when feeling nothing was safer than being afraid. "You should have let me stay dead."

 

"No one's dead. Mulder, you're frightening me," Dana said shakily.

 

He stared at the man in the mirror, who stared back with dead eyes. How could you leave her, Mulder accused the reflection silently. How could you abandon her and her child? Your child? What kind of man are you?

 

“I didn't know,” his reflection answered dully.

 

"Bullshit you didn't know," Mulder yelled. "Everyone counted on you, and you let them all down. How dare you come back and let her love you! You're not a man!"

 

A flash of rage exploded inside him. He drew back to hit the mirror, but Dana grabbed his arm and yelled for Will. Footsteps rushed down the hall. She clung to Mulder’s wrist.

 

Will reached the bathroom. "Dad?"

 

"I'm not pregnant," Dana promised as Mulder struggled with her. He wanted to grab the man in the mirror and beat some answers out of him. "You're not dead, Mulder. You didn't let anyone down. We're here. It's okay."

 

"It's okay," Will's voice repeated. "Dana, what's the matter with him?"

 

"I'm not sure, but I need him to calm down before he hurts himself."

 

"Stop it or you're going to hurt her, Dad," Will warned sternly. Mulder turned his head to look at him. "You're twice her size; you can't be flinging her about. What's done is done. She loves you. You love her. Sei kein Idiot."

 

Momentarily, Mulder saw his father's face in place of Will's: the same dark brown eyes and dark hair and angular jaw.

 

The bathroom brightened. Mulder looked again and saw his normal reflection. He had no marks on his cheeks or through his hand. No dead eyes.

 

"What, Will?"

 

"Don't be a fool," Will repeated. This time Mulder heard his son's voice, his son's accent. "Let Dana take care of you."

 

Mulder nodded. He relaxed his right arm, and Dana let go. He put his hand on the sink, steadying himself and checking the mirror one last time.

 

"Everything's okay," she assured him.

 

"I saw something."

 

"It wasn't real. It's shell shock. You know what it is."

 

Mulder nodded again. He did know what shell shock was, and this wasn't it. This was real. This was opening Pandora's box. This was the abyss looking back.

 

The shower continued to run, and warm steam filled the bathroom. He smelled soap and clean towels, Mercurochrome and cotton bandages and healing flesh - and Dana was right: he did need a shower.

 

Mulder touched the center scar again and bit his lower lip. Proof of his weakness had been carved into his body. Proof, in the shadows, something stronger and smarter than Mulder prowled, and he couldn't protect his family from it.

 

Mulder took a breath. He saw his chest rise and fall in the foggy mirror. He felt Will's eyes on him, looking at the scars, but his son said nothing.

 

"The scars will fade. You'll heal. You'll feel better after you shower," Dana said.

 

Mulder wasn't sure the last was true. He'd feel clean after he showered. He'd feel better once he knew who the enemy was and what he should believe. What the future held. Who the man in the looking glass was. Who had wanted Mulder dead - and why he wasn't.

 

*~*~*~*

 

The Boston Public Library opened in 1854, but in 1930 Mulder stumbled onto its most valuable resource, to a teenage boy: old medical books about sex. Books about men and women and sex. Sometimes with illustrations. By that time, Mulder’s mother spent twenty-three hours a day in her bedroom, and he had to make an appointment to speak to his father. No one cared how much time Mulder spent pouring over those quaint Victorian textbooks about obstetrics and urology and gynecology. Quaint was the proper word though, and his private school hadn’t offered a class on human sexuality. However, between the books, the locker room, and a trio of stag magazines he light-fingered, Mulder felt comparatively well-informed. At fifteen, he understood the fundamentals of menstruation, copulation, conception, and how to perform a basic gynecological examination with and without instruments. Mulder knew the word 'vagina' derived from the Latin word for 'sheath' - as in where a man put his sword - but he also thought it was pronounced to rhyme with 'Regina'.

 

Mulder hadn't been naive; it was a naive time. Nice people didn't talk about those things. They did them, of course, but they didn't talk about them. He tried to be factual with Will - and Dana could be uncomfortably, clinically factual - because Mulder had encountered adult men who thought girls urinated through their vagina and could get pregnant by fellatio.

 

No matter how many facts a person knew, intimacy was a learning process. Phoebe had been far worldlier, but Mulder remembered her surprise men had morning erections. Phoebe not knowing he couldn't pee while he was aroused. Mulder had underestimated the intensity of the female orgasm, and - the day Phoebe told him she was pregnant and he asked her to marry him - momentarily thought he hurt her. As a new husband, a clearly pregnant wife meeting him at their apartment door and telling him to take off his trousers: a revelation. He'd been working fourteen-hour days, but luckily he'd also been twenty-three years old.

 

At Oxford, Mulder learned about every possible perversion, dysfunction, and fetish. He'd admit to perusing Dana's medical textbooks on the sly, and to scrutinizing a copy of "Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Female." Those "Wayward Girl" and "Women Without Virtues" novels he kept confiscating from Will - Mulder wouldn't be a good father if he didn't review them before he tossed them into the fireplace.

 

Mulder considered himself well-informed, but until Frohike mentioned it last year, Mulder had no idea a woman could conceive without a man present. Without the woman realizing what was happening, even.

 

Mulder laid in the darkness, watching the snowflakes outside the bedroom window fall silently into the glow of the streetlamp and disappear. It was early morning. The house was quiet. No one drove on the street or walked on the sidewalk. No milkman, no paperboy yet. The bed sheets and his T-shirt smelled clean and felt soft against his skin. Dana slept with her head on his good shoulder and her hand over his bandaged heart.

 

He thought of the women's bodies in the death camp, years ago. Thousands of starving women expecting babies. The big, modern laboratory and the medical clinic. The brothel. They’d found quarters for twenty Nazi soldiers, and the brothel had four beds. The guards in the camp couldn’t have fathered all those women’s babies. A legion of Nazi soldiers raping in shifts couldn’t have fathered all those babies. After the war, the Allies discovered the German Lebensborn program – ‘racially pure’ babies conceived by Nazi officers and Aryan women for the Third Reich. The Nazis prized the women and children of the Lebensborn project, though. The women in the death camp had been left to starve. And their babies weren’t Aryan.

 

Mulder turned the pieces of information over in his mind, trying to fit them together.

 

What the hell were they doing in the camp, Mulder kept asking himself. Why?

 

He thought of what Dana told him - her nightmares of medical tests and Emily being an experiment and there was nothing about Mulder she didn't want.

 

Even once a woman was late, a test to make sure took a week, waiting to see if the rabbit's ovaries reacted to a hormone in the woman's urine. He could not have been with Dana on New Year’s Eve and have anyone - even Dana - know by mid-January she expected a baby. Mulder wanted to tell himself the baby wasn't even his, but his dreams said differently. Dana's auburn-haired twin girls weren't the only children he dreamed of, either.

 

He thought of the list of women’s names. A dated, all-inclusive, sequential list of his sexual partners – in England, Germany, France, Detroit, Boston, and his own bedroom in his New York apartment on a private floor at the top of The Plaza Hotel. Frohike believed some of those women could have been “arranged.” A set-up. Or, according to Frohike’s turkey baster theory, a doctor could create Mulder’s baby with a woman Mulder had never met.

 

He considered himself as quick-to-learn and intuitive, but Melvin Frohike wasn't the first person to call Mulder ‘spooky.’ He’d gotten flickers of someone’s presence, their emotions and sensations as long as he could remember. As a boy, he could sense Samantha. When Mulder became a father, he could detect William’s discomfort to the point Phoebe had called Mulder ‘a freak’ and he learned to keep his mouth shut about the baby.

 

Mulder sensed Dana far more strongly than he ever sensed Will or Sam. Mulder sensed Dana more than anyone he’d ever encountered.

 

He raised his right hand, looking at it. It was whole. Warm, healthy. Every day, he got stronger, felt better. He knew what he saw in the mirror last week, though.

 

What the hell am I, he asked the darkness silently.

 

He had a feeling the darkness wouldn’t answer.

 

Frohike got tight-lipped lately, too. Frohike remained convinced the government conducted syphilis experiments among Negros in the south. According to Frohike, They - the omnipresent, shadowy Them - infected psychiatric patients with malaria and retarded children with hepatitis and illegitimate babies with herpes. Frohike sprinkled ‘paranoid' on his corn flakes, like Agent Dales did. The CIA conducted mind control experiments, a surgeon in San Quentin Prison replaced men's testicles with those from animals, and the Navy sprayed bacteria from planes over San Francisco. Conspiracies lurked everywhere, to Frohike, but the questions about Dana's pregnancy and disappearance last year had come to an abrupt halt.

 

If the message came from Mulder's dying father, what had it meant? May 12, 2012? Dana knew something; Mulder could tell. What was he supposed to believe and who or what should he fight?

 

Mulder was a divorced, out-of-work, ex-baseball player.

 

Why am I here, he wanted to know.

 

There was no sound except the alarm clock on the nightstand continuing to tick toward dawn. The sun would rise soon, and another day would unfold. He'd do the exercises the doctor prescribed, read to Emily, talk to Will on the telephone after school. Maybe egg salad for lunch, and watch a detective show on the television in the evening. Dana had a mid-term examination at ten, but then she was finished with school for the Christmas break. Will wanted a car for Christmas, and Mulder needed to call the dealership and arrange that. Emily had a doctor's appointment in Manhattan; he needed to call about airline or train tickets for her and Dana, too.

 

He would heal, but he would never be the man he was before Thanksgiving. But he'd never be twenty-three again, either. No man planned for his life to change. Not specifically, not really. Change happened. Life happened. Falling in love, fathering a child, finding a job, ending a life. Marrying, burying, mourning, celebrating... What happened in the aftermath of change mattered more: when a man found out what counted and who he was.

 

A man who had a 'why' to live could bear any 'how.' That was Nietzsche. Mulder’s father loved Nietzsche. Then again, so had Hitler.

.

 

Beside Mulder, Dana shifted. She pulled the blanket higher over him and mumbled sleepily, "What do you need?"

 

"Nothing, I guess." he admitted.

 

"Go to sleep," she whispered, and put her hand over his. "I'm right here."

 

He turned his head, watching her pretty face in the light from the streetlamp.

 

Noticing her had been chance. Crossing paths with her again - in the Mercy ER, in Central Park - maybe that was a second chance: Fate giving a preoccupied fellow a shove in the right direction. Making love to Dana was magic, and being with her was playing with fire. In the weeks since she brought him home, Dana had a silent, determined fierceness to her love. He knew Dana kept secrets from him, and other secrets larger than either of them existed. But Mulder also knew Dana had been all standing between him and death. He still felt the tug of it: how her soul had stood on the shore of the lake, anchoring his.

 

She's the why, Mulder reminded himself, and that he was certain of.

 

*~*~*~*

 

"Okay?" Mulder asked Frohike, wanting an honest answer.

 

Melvin Frohike studied him and signaled for Mulder to turn around.

 

Mulder did. His favorite gray flannel trousers fit loose in the waist. He wore a white collared shirt, a tie, and dark blue wool sweater; the bulk of the wool concealed the bandages underneath. He'd shaved and gotten his clothes on by himself, but Dana had to help with the tie, the buttons, and the cufflinks, and replaced the sling.

 

"Pale. Thin. Your socks match." Frohike raised his camera, looking through the lens to double-check. “You'd say you could use a haircut.”

 

"Your hair is fine," Will informed his father from his seat halfway up the stairs. "It keeps you from being the embodiment of square."

 

"Two dollars says you can't define 'embodiment,' son,"

 

As Dana appeared on the landing in a tailored wool suit, Will fixed his eyes on Mulder defiantly. "Exemplification," the boy pronounced crisply. "Typification.  Epitome. Quintessence."

 

Mulder grinned. "To think your old man had a job with his name on his shirt."

 

Emily sat a few steps down from Will, watching what passed for excitement at the Mulder house these days. Dana touched Will's shoulder as she came down the steps in her high heels. She smoothed Emily's hair in passing and stopped on the bottom step, smiling shyly at Mulder.

 

"You are gorgeous," Mulder pronounced, looking at her.

 

His son said, "She’s one classy dame, Daddy-O. Easy to cast an eyeball on and coolsville under fire."

 

"I have no idea what that means, but it seems positive," Mulder told her, and Dana's smiled broadened.

 

Emily leaned against Will's knee, watching them. Frohike peeked out the front window, watching the reporters and photographers assembled on the front lawn. There was a press conference scheduled on Mulder's porch in five minutes.

 

"I am ready if you are," Mulder said. "I think I'm about fifteen minutes from Painsville."

 

"You don't want your pills?"

     

"I have a hard time answering reporters' questions as it is; a dose of pain medication won’t help."

 

"Okay. I stand there and look adoring?" she checked. 

 

They'd had photographers follow them, and an occasional reporter intrude, but she'd never done a press conference. Mulder had done thousands. He made sure he didn't have shaving cream in his ear, and he grinned and let Frohike do most of the talking.

 

"I'm thinking I'll have you both sit on the front steps so Mulder doesn't get tired as quickly. Miss Scully, sit a step below him, turn toward him, and cross your legs at the ankles," Frohike instructed.

 

Dana sat down a few steps from the bottom of the staircase, following Frohike's directions and making sure she understood.

 

He appraised her with a practiced eye. "Sit up straight. Knees together. Look up and, of course, look adoring."

 

Mulder leaned on the banister, watching her. He remembered Frohike coaching him, years ago, telling him what to say and how to act. "The flashbulbs are the worst," Mulder said as Frohike looked through the camera lens at Dana. "All of them popping at once. Keep smiling, and remember we have bodyguards with guns standing outside the frame."

 

Frohike lowered his camera. "You'll hear me say you're Mulder's girlfriend and a nurse, and the doctors credit you with saving his life. You were at dinner with him that night. I'll talk about his shooting and recovery. There will be questions about the medication overdose. We don't mention Will or Emily-"

 

"We're unmentionable," Will told Emily, nudging her with his knee. She nudged him back with her elbow, less gently.

 

"You don't have to speak. I'll field any questions about you," Frohike continued. "Don't worry. These are reporters I've invited. They won't give you a hard time. Mulder, give me the signal if you need to stop. Don't stand up until I tell you to; I don't want pictures of you struggling to get to your feet."

 

Dana nodded.

 

"Good luck, Daddy-O. Rock and roll," William said from above them.

 

Mulder didn't care how popular the music was; the phrase was vulgar, and he wished Will would stop saying it in front of Dana and Emily. He gave Will a stern look. Will grinned so impishly and contagiously Mulder's stern look faded.

 

"Wonder boy," Mulder said, and both their grins broadened.

 

Emily didn't know the joke, but she grinned too. From her seat on the step, Dana's eyes twinkled and she smiled mysteriously.

 

"Hold on a second," Frohike requested. He stepped back from them, raised his camera, and snapped a photograph of the four of them. He put his hand on the front door. "Now we rock and roll."

 

Mulder would have sighed if it hadn't hurt.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder had come to love afternoon naps in the last month.

 

Frohike cleared the press off the front lawn, and left to make some calls. Will and Emily were somewhere in the house, doing something hopefully not involving fire or communist activity. The maid would answer the phone, and the world would continue to function without Mulder for an hour or two. Dana led Mulder up the steps, down the hall, and into his bedroom.

 

"Give me drugs, Nurse Scully." Mulder sank on the bed tiredly and toed off his shoes.

 

"Coming right up, Mr. Mulder." She unbuttoned her suit coat, took it off, and put it on a wooden hanger. Her high heels came off quickly, and her skirt, leaving her slip and stockings. 

 

She reached in his closet for a dress, but he said, "Never mind the drugs. Come here."

 

He lay back on the bed, gesturing for her to come to him. Which she did - after she put on a dress. "Do you want your clothes off?"

 

"Not once you've put your clothes back on. Party pooper," he told her as she lay down beside him, careful not to jiggle.

 

Mulder exhaled slowly, relaxing.

 

"Are you hurting?"

 

"A little, but it's nice to have my mind clear." He turned his face toward her. "I worry I'll say something stupid to the press. When I started playing, I'd get so nervous Frohike made me memorize lines to say to reporters."

 

"That wasn't awful." She put her hand on his abdomen. "With the press. I liked what you said - about how you don't save a good pitcher for tomorrow, because tomorrow it may rain. Was it Mr. Frohike's line?"

 

Mulder folded his good arm behind his head. The reporter's question had been about his plans for the two of them. "No, it was mine."

 

"It will be the headline tomorrow," Dana told him.

 

"It will be."

 

His eyes closed, and his limbs felt heavy.

 

"I can't promise there won't be more rain, Mulder."

 

"I didn't ask you to," he said softly. He rolled to his side, facing and laying close to her. 

 

"Ships are safe in the harbor. But that's not what ships are built for," she whispered. "My father used to say that."

 

"It's December. Tomorrow it may snow," he told her quietly, at the edge of sleep. "We should stay here, make the most of today."

 

Mulder felt her kiss his lips.

 

"I wish I could," he mumbled. "I'll have to give you a rain check. Get back to me in a few weeks."

 

"A rain check on what?" Dana sounded confused.

 

"Making love. Thank you for the invitation. I will definitely get back to you."

 

"I didn't say that, Mulder."

 

He opened his eyes, and found she looked perplexed but not upset or embarrassed.

 

"Scully, I heard you. You wished I could make love to you this afternoon."

 

"I didn't say that."

 

Mulder replayed the last minutes in his mind. He knew he heard her. "Maybe you thought it very loudly," he guessed.

 

"Maybe I did," she admitted.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder lay marooned on his sofa, guarded by a five-year-old cherub in kitten-print pajamas and a Davy Crockett cap. Dana gave the order for him to rest and, rather than getting ready for bed, Emily implemented it. Mulder tried to sneak his foot to the floor, but Em threatened, "I’ll tell Mommy. You'll be in Big Trouble."

 

Mulder looked at a dirty cup on the end table and a little jacket that had fallen from the coatrack. He noted Dana’s scarf on the banister and Emily’s smudged handprint on the glass of the front door. The maid wouldn’t come until tomorrow morning, and Dana sounded busy upstairs. Agent Dales and his FBI supervisor should arrive in fifteen minutes. Mulder put his foot on the floor again and reminded Emily, "Your mommy isn't the boss of this house." 

 

Emily appeared perplexed. She frowned and hurried off to find her mother. Mulder heard, "Mommy, Mulder says you're not-" before a door closed upstairs.

 

He got up from the sofa slowly, which prolonged the pain but minimized the dizziness. Moving at glacial speed, Mulder hid the scarf and cup, and gave the handprint on the glass a rub with his shirt cuff. Picking up Emily’s jacket required bending and reaching, so the jacket remained where it was. Dinner dishes still soaked in the kitchen sink and a basket of dirty clothes waited for the washing machine at the basement door.

 

Mulder held his aching shoulder and looked at the laundry basket. He wondered what Dana would do to him if he opened the basement door and kicked it down the stairs.

 

A car engine died in front of the house. Car doors opened. Footsteps approached on the snowy sidewalk. Mulder gave the basket a kick, sending it tumbling down to the basement. He shut the basement door.

 

Dana clipped downstairs in a sweater and slacks. She ran a comb through her hair and tucked her hair behind her ears. 

 

“What was that noise?” She hid the comb behind the fish tank. “Did you fall? Did something fall?”

 

“Nothing,” Mulder said. Men’s footsteps reached the front porch. “Special Agent Dales is here. You’re going to wear pants?” Mulder disliked trousers on women, especially in public, but Dana informed him long ago she'd start wearing exclusively dresses anytime he did.

 

As Mulder stepped into his shoes, Dana made a whirlwind tour of the living room, dropping Mulder’s pillow behind the sofa and kicking Emily’s toys beneath it to join the cup and scarf.

 

“I can have them wait in the snow while I change,” she offered, and snapped the television set off.

 

Agent Dales knocked on the front door.

 

Mulder offered Dana his right hand, palm up, in desperation. She made him eat dinner, too - insisting he’d be less nervous if he ate. Instead, he remained nervous about talking to the FBI supervisor with the added worry of vomiting turkey and dressing on him.

 

Dana straightened Mulder’s tie. “You’ll do fine,” she promised him. “Relax.” She unlocked the stubborn front door, but nodded for Mulder to open it.

 

As he put his hand on the knob, he glanced back to see Emily on the landing in her pajamas, making half an effort at brushing her teeth.

 

Mulder took a slow breath, winced, and opened the door. 

 

Agent Dales greeted him with, “Fox Mulder, the baseball player - How’s the ticker?” Agent Dales stomped snow off his shoes, managing to get none of it on the mat yet evenly distribute it across ten feet of polished hardwood floor. "I saw your picture in the paper last week. Didn't read the article, but I saw it."

 

Mulder remembered to breathe. "It's good to see you again, Agent Dales. This is Dana Scully, and you met Emily last year." He tipped his head at the top of the stairs. "William is with his mother."

 

"Hello, young lady," Agent Dales responded, "Good to meet you. This is-"

 

"Assistant Director Walter Skinner," the tall, bald man said tersely, and offered his hand. “A big fan. Agent Dales tells me you’re interested in some Bureau cases, Mr. Mulder.”

 

Assistant Director Walter Skinner didn’t take off his coat or set down his briefcase. He was an imposing figure in an expensive trench coat, with wire-rimmed glasses and a polite but reserved expression that seemed forced.

 

"That's right. Thank you for coming.” Mulder put his right arm around Dana for support: physical, moral, spiritual, whatever.   

 

"Can I get you gentlemen some coffee?" Dana asked. "You look like you came from the office. Have you had dinner? We have turkey."

 

"I'm not proud; I'll eat." Dales tossed his hat on top of the coat rack, and flicked the aquarium with his finger to frighten the fish. 

 

"Mr. Skinner?" she asked.

 

The Assistant Director held his hat and glanced at his watch. 

 

Mulder cleared his throat and gestured for everyone to sit down in the living room.

 

"So you're interested in the FBI?" Mr. Skinner prompted, sitting on the edge of his chair as Dana vanished into the kitchen.

 

Emily ambled downstairs in her pajamas, bringing a pitiful-looking stuffed Kitty. She curled up beside Mulder on the couch, leaning sleepily against his bad arm. He hadn't wanted to wear the sling in front of the FBI men, so Emily couldn't tell she leaned on the wrong side and hurt him. Mulder hadn't wanted to take his pain pills this evening, either, and he felt the lack of them.

 

"Mulder's been writing a monograph." Agent Dales sank onto the sofa and propped his feet on the coffee table. "Or a dissertation. Or something. Anyway, he needs files."

 

"A dissertation. Behavior Patterns in Stranger Killings."

 

"The FBI will certainly cooperate as much as possible." Mr. Skinner sounded like a politician at a fundraiser. Men who wore suits and ties to work tended to speak to Mulder as though English was his second language. "Could you explain specifically what you're wanting?"

 

Mulder took one of those slow, calming breaths - less calming presently because it made pain radiate through his chest. "As you know, stranger killings are notoriously difficult to solve because there seems to be no clear motive for the crime. The attacks seem random and senseless, as well as bizarre. It seems the work of a madman, yet someone truly insane is far easier to catch than this type of killer."

 

Mr. Skinner nodded impatiently.

 

"My proposal is there is a motivation, but one unique to the killer's perspective. His actions make sense in his own twisted mind. As we would nod in understanding if a husband killed an unfaithful wife - a criminal, but comprehensible act - a stranger killer might ritually revenge childhood abuse on women who remind him of his mother. If we can see the world as the killer sees it and understand what he gains from the crime, we can predict the type of person who would commit such acts. By examining the crime, we can know the killer."

 

Mr. Skinner watched Mulder intently, cautiously, like a soldier who had spent so long on guard he forgot how to relax. As he nodded for Mulder to continue, Mr. Skinner leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees.

 

"The basic question is 'Why?'” Mulder said. “Why would this criminal choose the victim, the manner, the time and place? I want to take preliminary data from solved stranger killings and blindly predict the type of person who committed the crimes. Then, I go back and check my error rate. How close did I get on basic facts: age, occupation, location, habits, and so forth."

 

"Deductive reasoning," Mr. Skinner supplied. "Like Sherlock Holmes. 'What sort of person would do this sort of thing?'"

 

"Yes, but using what we know of human behavior and modern criminal psychology. Find the pattern and use it to find the killer before he can kill again."

 

"How accurate do you think you can be?"

 

"I'm not sure," Mulder hedged. "Without knowing the specifics of the cases, it's hard to say."

 

"Eighty percent," Dales announced. "I gave him five files. He was right on the money on four out of five. I told you this evening wasn't a waste of time."

 

Mr. Skinner looked annoyed with Agent Dales, but asked, "And the fifth?"

 

"It was an X-file," the FBI agent answered as he accepted a glass of iced tea from Dana. "Aliens. He didn't even come close. The other descriptions he nailed like a truck stop waitress. Oh, sorry, sweetie." Dales glanced Dana.

 

Dana frowned and herded her daughter to the kitchen with her.

 

"That's higher than the average Bureau solution rate."  Skinner paused and Mulder swallowed dryly. "Excuse my skepticism, but you're a baseball player, Mr. Mulder - and an excellent one - and this is highly sensitive information you're asking for-"

 

"I respect that." 

 

"It's not a matter of respect. We're talking about the most horrific of crimes, and you're claiming you can solve these cases better than my best agents. You have no qualifications, no experience. I understand you were recently the victim of a violent crime-"

 

"Not solve," Mulder interrupted. "Predict the type of perpetrator based on-"

 

"Give him a file, Skinner," Dales said. "Open your briefcase, pick any casefile, and let him look at it and tell you what he thinks. Your agents spend most of their time chasing their own or someone else's tail on murder investigations, so what do you have to lose?"

 

"My job, to start with," Skinner responded tersely. "Mr. Mulder-"

 

"You boxed." Mulder said the first thing that came to mind. "A slugger: you can take the hits, but you were never light on your feet. That's an easy one. Your nose has been broken a few times and there's scaring on your cheekbones. Your father boxed, and he taught you.”

 

Assistant Director Skinner sat back on the sofa.

 

“Your father was blue-collar,” Mulder continued. “Old-world skilled labor: a hard worker, but not a gentleman. He spoke with an accent, and he embarrassed you. Your mother was Russian as well but younger, more assimilated. You used to wonder why she married him. You came not long after they married, and you thought that was why." Mulder paused. "It wasn't. You were a good kid: went to church, didn't mess around, and stood up to playground bullies. You enlisted in the Marines as soon as you could pass for eighteen. You saw action at the end of WWI, and you stayed in. You liked the order of the military. You would have made a career of it, but you came back to the States because your mother got sick. After she died, you went to work for the Department of Justice and for Hoover. You met a girl - East Coast, old-money - who you were surprised would give you the time of day, let alone marry you. She's your world. Decades now, and she still is. She makes it all worthwhile: the bureaucracy and late nights at the office. The blood on your hands. You don't talk about work at home, but she is why you do what you do. You stop the bad guys before they can get to her. It wears a man down, though: time away from home. Things happen. She thought it was about something she couldn't give you, but you still don't believe you're good enough for her. Like you never thought your father was good enough for you mother."

 

Mr. Skinner's face remained expressionless. Mulder wished he'd focused less on the Assistant Director's love life. He hadn't meant to be insulting. He shouldn't have said all that in front of Agent Dales, especially.

 

Mulder glanced at Agent Dales, but since no one mentioned space aliens, Dales watched the fish tank and looked bored.

 

"On what are you basing your assumptions?" the Assistant Director asked.

 

"A thousand little details, a few facts, and deductive reasoning. Your consonants are a hard, when you're tired,” Mulder explained. “English wasn't the language you spoke at home as a child. A newspaper article a few months ago mentioned you were a former U.S. Marshal. I'm basing my assumptions on an expensive gold watch you keep checking, a worn wedding band, how your necktie is tied and your shoes are polished. How your coat is tailored but your hands are rough for a man with a desk job. You change your own spark plugs, cut your own lawn - and men who do that don't wear a gold Rolex unless a woman gives it to them."

 

"Maybe the Bureau gave me the watch," Mr. Skinner suggested neutrally.

 

"I think you've given the FBI far more than it's given you."

 

A long silence wove through the living room.

 

"If you were correct, what would it get you?" Mr. Skinner asked.

 

"The upper hand," Mulder answered. "Know a man, and you know what he's capable of, how he thinks, what he'll do next. How to control him."

 

The Assistant Director nodded, which was encouraging. "What's the purpose of this dissertation, Mr. Mulder?"

 

"It's a requirement to finish my doctorate in criminal psychology at Oxford."

 

Mr. Skinner's eyebrow twitched. He asked in the tone of disbelief Dana used last year, "Oxford University in England? Fox Mulder the baseball player? You have a doctorate in criminal psychology from Oxford?"

 

"Not yet," Mulder said. "I need some FBI files."

 

Mr. Skinner hesitated but reached into his briefcase. "One file," he said sternly.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder closed the file. He took a nervous sip of tea before he worked up the courage to look at Mr. Skinner. He glanced at Dales, who folded his arms smugly. Mulder took that as a positive sign.  

 

Dana kept peeking out of the kitchen, watching Mulder worriedly. He hurt, and he felt tired, but he wouldn’t die.

 

Mr. Skinner took off his glasses and needlessly, methodically wiped them with his handkerchief. He stroked his fingers over the muscles of his throat thoughtfully. Mulder waited, hoping the Assistant Director would say something soon; Mulder held his breath and he’d started feeling lightheaded.

 

"May I use your telephone?" Mr. Skinner asked. 

 

"Of course," Mulder answered quickly. "There's a telephone in here and one in the kitchen."

 

"If you're calling your wife, it's gonna be a long evening," Dales informed his boss around a mouthful of sweet potatoes. "You sure you don't want our lovely hostess to warm up some leftovers for you? She's a good little cook."

 

Mr. Skinner smoothed his left eyebrow and disappeared through the swinging door without answering.   

 

Mulder whispered to Agent Dales, "What did I get wrong?" as china plates and metal roasting pans clinked on the other side of the kitchen door. Assistant Director Skinner must have been hungry after all.

 

"You didn't get anything wrong. He hates it when I'm right," Dales explained as he picked turkey out of his teeth with his pinky nail.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder spent Christmas Eve alone, and at lunchtime, he savored every moment of it.

 

William was with Phoebe in London - something she claimed Mulder agreed to, but Mulder had no memory of - and Dana and Emily traveled home from a doctor's appointment in New York. Mulder didn't have to do his exercises. He didn't have to shave or shower or get dressed. He didn't have to eat breakfast or lunch. He could have eaten breakfast for lunch, if he wanted. He could nap on the sofa and watch all the television he wanted. He could pee with the bathroom door open. He could take his pills or not; he elected 'not.' After weeks of constant medical surveillance, freedom felt wonderful.

 

Mulder laid on the sofa in his blue jeans and the old gray shirt Dana hated, propped up on pillows, with an FBI file open on his knees. He had a yellow notepad on his lap, and he chewed the end of a pencil absently and made notes as he worked through the crime scene photos and police reports.

 

The telephone rang, startling him. He dropped his pencil while trying to reach for the phone. Dana called from Idlewild Airport in New York. Their plane would fly despite the snowstorm in D.C.

 

"What did Dr. Scanlon say?" Mulder asked. He cradled the phone against his ear and tried to reach the pencil with his left hand. 

 

"We'll talk about that later," Dana responded over the crackling line.

 

Mulder heard the announcements on the airport PA system in the background. "That doesn't sound good."

 

"Later," Dana reiterated.

 

"Emily's okay?" He tried for the pencil again. Without the pain pills, he couldn't stretch out his left arm enough to reach it. The pencil lay stubbornly on the rug, about four inches beyond his reach.

 

"She's tired but okay, I think."

 

"Okay. I love you. Be safe. Call me when the plane lands at National."

 

"I love you. We'll see you in a few hours," Dana promised.

 

Still reaching idly for the pencil, Mulder said good-bye to Dana, good-bye to Emily, and good-bye to Dana again before hanging up the telephone.

 

Mulder looked down. The gnawed pencil lay in his left hand. He stared at it, unsure how it got there.

 

The hair on the back of his neck bristled.

 

He glanced around, wishing he had a more reliable witness to whatever had happened than the fish.

 

Mulder dropped the pencil in roughly the same place. He reached for it again, testing. From his position on the sofa, he couldn't reach it. He could roll sideways and get it, or sit up and lean down, but he hadn't done either of those things because they hurt. He'd wanted the pencil, been distracted, and the pencil appeared in his hand.

 

Out of curiosity, Mulder touched the lamp on the sofa table behind him first with his left, then right hand, seeing if he could make it go off. He turned it off the normal way and tried to make it come back on.

 

In their aquarium near the front door, the fish grouped together and watched him.

 

Mulder decided he acted crazy, switched to a fountain pen, and went back to work on the casefile.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder must have dozed off waiting for Dana and Emily to call from the airport. He woke to crime scene photos spilled across his chest, his reading glasses halfway down his nose, and Dana's voice whispering, "Are you going to sleep on the couch?" into his ear in a manner Mulder interpreted as seductive. 

 

"Santa can't come if you're not in bed." Mulder sat up and smiled sleepily at her. By evening, his bachelor bliss wore off and the big house seemed empty without her and Emily and Will. "I missed you."

 

His smile faded at her complete lack of amusement; usually she'd at least roll her eyes. Dana checked him over, making sure he hadn't developed the plague in her absence, but she seemed so far away he might as well have been alone.

 

"You're going to get a lump of coal in your stocking if you keep talking fresh," she said, like a disinterested actor supplying her line.

 

"I think I'm already on the naughty list." Mulder took a sip from the glass of tepid water on the coffee table, and watched her as he swallowed. "I thought you were going to call me from the airport?"

 

"You didn't answer."

 

Dana looked around at the ruins of his day: files and books scattered on every flat surface, the phone cord stretched across the rug to sofa, and the television set droning in the background. She picked up his congealed, uneaten plate of food and turned back toward the kitchen.

 

Mulder had been beside the phone all night, worrying about the snowstorm and waiting for her to call. Maybe the telephone lines were down or the operator put the call through wrong, but the telephone hadn't rung in hours.

 

"You know, according to the Kinsey sex study, we're lagging behind the national naughty average. Not that your behind lags at all." He tilted his head to admire as she walked away in her stocking feet. "This is my best material," he called. "Could you appreciate it?" There was no response from the other side of the door. "How was your afternoon, Mulder?" he supplied for her. "Oh, my day was fine, Scully. I had a grand time with my files. How was yours? It was all right. Let me tell you what Dr. Scanlon said..."

 

He heard a few seconds of domestic noise from the kitchen: the cabinets and icebox opening. Dana returned with a glass of orange juice - her all-purpose cure-all - and two pain pills. "Have you done anything besides stare at those files today? Have you eaten?" 

 

"Mumm," Mulder replied noncommittally. He swallowed the pills and drained the glass. He stroked her thigh through her wool skirt. "I'm fine. How did it go today?"

 

Instead of answering, she found it necessary to step away and adjust the stockings hanging above the empty fireplace, and to unplug the Christmas tree lights for the night. The outlet was too far back for her to reach, and the branches lashed her face as she struggled. Dana cursed and jerked the lights out by the cord. Although she sounded angry, as she got to her feet, Mulder could have sworn she wiped tears instead of pine needles from her face.

 

"Is everything okay? Honey?" He reached out and pulled her back to the sofa. "Come here, sit down-" In true Santa fashion, he tried to guide her onto his lap, but she pulled away. He stood instead. "And tell me what's wrong."  

 

"I'm fine," she said predictably, looking past him.     

 

He bit the inside of his lip, not sure what to say next. "Is Emily fine?"

 

"No." She turned away. "But she hasn't been fine for a long time. Why don't you sleep in a bed so you don't wake up sore?"

 

"I was waiting for you to get home. Scully, did you see a doctor too? Are you-" He started to say 'okay,' but stopped and considered the possibilities. 

 

If she conceived the night before they brought Emily home from the hospital - or in the week after - she'd know. Perhaps there was something to his hallucinations, despite what Dana claimed. Dana started classes again in a few weeks, but the baby wouldn't come until summer. Georgetown University wouldn't let a woman attend while pregnant, but she might finish the spring semester before someone figured it out. He didn't see the point; she’d never be going back to school, and he'd rather she took it easy with a baby coming.

 

He suspected Dana wouldn’t see it that way, though. 

 

Regardless, she'd have to stop working. They'd have to get married, which was fine with him. Mulder kept up his 'not dead' end of the deal.

 

He got a warm, fluttery sensation in his belly until he realized if Dana was expecting, she didn't look thrilled about it.

 

She adjusted Em's coat on the coat rack and stooped down to arrange everyone's shoes beside the door so the heels lined up, as if putting some order in the world.

 

"Dana?" he asked. "Are you?"

 

"No, Mulder. I’ve told you," she said tiredly. "I need some time."

 

"You need some time? To do what?"

 

"To think."

 

"About what? Emily?"

 

"About everything. If you're okay, I'm going to bed."

 

He looked at her and sighed dejectedly, like a man who finds nothing he likes on a restaurant menu. He wouldn’t leave the diner, but he wasn't half as excited as when he walked through the door.

 

"Sure. Okay. Fine. I'll put the presents in the trunk of the car to go to your mother's in the morning, and I'll be up. If you’re tired, go on to bed."

 

She paused on the bottom step with her hand on the mahogany banister. "We're having Christmas here. I told you that, too."

 

"Oh for God's sake!" Mulder remained certain this evening had an entire subplot unbeknownst to him. "I thought we settled this." 

 

Bill Scully refused to be in the same house with Mulder, and he wouldn't allow Tara and baby Matthew there, either. Christmas morning was traditionally at Margaret Scully's house, and it seemed easiest for Dana and Emily to go without Mulder rather than ruin everyone's holiday. Mulder would be content spending a second day napping on the sofa, eating a leftover meatloaf sandwich, and watching Christmas specials on television while Emily and Dana opened presents with Grammy. It wouldn't be the first Christmas he spent alone. By his count, it would be the twenty-first, and at least he had meatloaf and television.

 

"Em should have Christmas with a family. I'm not helpless. I was fine without you today, Scully."

 

She turned back quickly, eye-to-eye with him since she stood on the first step. "Don't tell me what my daughter should have!"

 

Dumbfounded, Mulder stepped back. "Fine. Go to your mother's, don't go to your mother's. Tell me what's wrong, don't tell me. Do whatever you want. I don't even know what we're fighting about. Let's go to bed."

 

He pushed the switches at the bottom of the steps, turning off the light on the porch, the foyer, and the passageway to the kitchen so only the fish tank glowed. He looked up. She still stood there. She watched him, her expression sad. Her shoulders slouched wearily. Her anger had flared and gone, leaving her hollow and alone.

 

"What, honey?" Mulder asked quietly. He took her hand; it trembled.

 

Having her with him at night had led to slow, careful exploration that, the last few nights, bordered on consummation. It had been a year since the first time he proposed, and he'd thought making love tonight might be a nice way to commemorate that. Creativity would be involved, so he'd thought of seeing if she might reconsider her position on marriage while he was at it.

 

Seeming to pick up on his thoughts, she said flatly, "I don't want to be with you tonight." Dana found nothing on the menu she liked, either.

 

"I was joking," Mulder lied. "Come on. You had a long day and you look exhausted."

 

"I'd rather be alone. We can talk tomorrow. Goodnight." 

 

Mulder blinked. He opened his mouth to speak but let go of her hand and took a step back. Without a word, Dana turned and continued up the stairs, leaving him standing at the bottom. After a few seconds, he heard the door to his bedroom close. He'd been kicked out of his own bed. There was Will's bedroom, Emily's bedroom, and two unoccupied guest rooms, but he'd be damned if he'd go sleep in any of them.

 

Mulder shook his head. He gestured to the fish he had no idea what was happening and headed back to the sofa.

 

As he passed the cold fireplace - because Santa couldn't come with a fire in the hearth - he batted at the empty stockings and succeeded in twisting his shoulder the wrong way. It twinged painfully. Sighing, he adjusted a throw pillow and lay back down, listening to the sounds of Dana moving around upstairs, wrestling her demons in private.

 

Merry Goddamn Christmas. It was becoming a tradition.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder wiped the fog from the bathroom mirror again. His reflection stared back at him, alive and unflinchingly real. The steam still settled from his shower. Mulder turned his freshly shaven face from side to side and carefully watched the man who watched back.

 

Dana tried to feed him, but Mulder didn't have much of an appetite. The man in the mirror had gained, and now lost four pounds since he stepped off the professional ball field for the last time. He saw the outline of his ribs but not the muscles of his stomach; last year it was the other way around. 'Lean' the sportswriters wrote; 'lanky' Mulder thought, with hands, feet, and a nose intended for someone else. He had fine lines around his eyes, and glasses he wore if no one was looking: the price of time and tide.

 

The new scars bisected his chest and decorated his left shoulder in an impressively horrible manner. He had the scar on his leg from a mortar round that put him out of WWII for two months, and the scars on his knees that put him out of a career. A faint white scar remained visible on his forehead if he looked closely. Not bad for forty years on this Earth.

 

The worst damage didn't even show.

 

"What's takin' you so long, Mulder?" a plaintive voice on the other side of the bathroom door asked. Little fingers wiggled through the space between the floor and the door. "Hurry up."

 

Mulder snapped back to reality. "I'm ready." He pulled his T-shirt and dress shirt on. "Move your fingers so you don't get pinched, Em."

 

Mulder opened the door to find Emily crouched on the rug with her ruffled backside up in the air as she tried to see underneath the door. Emily had on her Christmas dress, so Dana must be ready to go. She pulled a Diana 'It's snowing, Mulder. Can you get up and drive us to Mom's?' - obviously a ploy of some kind. Dana would have borrowed the neighborhood dogs and dog-sledded to her mother's house before she’d ask Mulder for help this morning. Something, as the great detective said, was afoot.

 

"Go find your coat, Em."  

 

"Uncle Freaky is here. Mommy says for you to come downstairs."

 

"Uncle Freaky? Really? Is Aunt Langly with him?" Mulder still held one cufflink. "Fine. Uncle Freaky and I need to have a talk."

 

In sorting through the papers Byers prepared each month, Mulder was startled to see the headline 'Yankee Legend's Planned Comeback Cut Short By Mysterious Attacks - Are Communists in US Government Involved?' in an article clipped from the paper a month ago. A note attached asked, 'Did you know anything about this? Melvin Frohike won't tell me. Do I need to look into this?' in Byers' copperplate script.

 

No, Mulder hadn't known anything about it. He was barely conscious a month ago. The article wasn't so bad. To Mulder's knowledge, a comeback was not in the works, but whatever floated the reporter’s boat. Upon reading the article, Mulder learned the Russians had a stake in Mulder not returning to professional baseball, boosting American morale, and thereby aiding the war against Communism. Mulder had no idea he was so important; someone should tell William his father solely thwarted the Red Menace.

 

Mulder’s bone to pick with Frohike was what accompanied the headline: a snapshot of the four of them - Mulder, Dana, Emily, and Will - playing in the snow in 'majestic' Central Park last December. It wasn't a press photo, either. Mulder remembered Frohike taking it. 'Fox Mulder's lovely female companions' had their names in print: Dana and Emily Scully, right next to his son's name. The rest of the caption was nonsense about blue books and paperclips. Mulder and Uncle Freaky would definitely talk. 

 

After tucking the clipping in his pocket, Mulder buttoned his shirt awkwardly and followed Emily down the hall. As he reached the balcony, Dana, dressed in a pretty Sunday suit, answered the door to the Byers family. Mulder tilted his head, trying to determine what was happening. He wasn't surprised to have Frohike get lonely and show up on Christmas morning. Or that Frohike brought Langly. But Byers said he and Susanne took the girls to spend Christmas with their grandmother in Poland.      

 

"Mulder! Merry Christmas," Byers called. Byers stomped the snow off his shoes while trying to balance two armloads of presents. The gifts started to slide. John Byers, never the master of grace, flinched as a shoebox-sized present hit the hardwood floor with a glass-shattering crash.

 

"Oh, you got me the vase," Susanne said in her Polish accent. She shrugged off her coat. "How sweet, John. Merry Christmas, Mr. Mulder."

 

"Merry Christmas," Mulder mumbled back after a second.

 

Santa's elves had visited the living room in the time it took Mulder to shower, shave, and contemplate his reflection. The stockings were empty when Dana woke Mulder at seven-thirty, getting him out of the living room so she could clean up and get ready before their company arrived. 'Would you drive us to Mom's?' his ass.

 

Emily rushed past him, toward Byers’ girls. Mulder walked down the steps to Dana, who greeted him with a kiss on the cheek - likely for the benefit of their guests.

 

"You look smug," he whispered as everyone else headed for the Christmas tree. "You tricked me."

 

She nodded yes and fastened his right cufflink for him.  She adjusted his collar and smoothed the fabric of his shirt over his shoulders. "You can thank me later."

 

"You invited everyone for Christmas without telling me? I hate surprises."

 

"No, you don't," she answered, and Mulder looked down sheepishly. "Will has an early flight out of London, so he'll be here later. That was the best Mr. Byers could negotiate with your ex-wife. I left messages with your mother's housekeeper, but I haven't heard from her." Dana looked at him uncertainly, but added, "Surprise," forcing a Betty-Crocker-fresh-brownies smile.

 

Mulder didn't smile back. Her expression fell. She sighed tiredly. 

 

"Hey-" He stepped close and leaned down to kiss her. "Thank you. For everything."

 

"Thank you for putting up with me," she murmured back, sounding relieved. "I'm sorry about last night."

 

"I figure I'll wear down your defenses and you'll eventually stop being so difficult." He nuzzled at her neck until he heard Byers' twins making prepubescent "eeewww!" noises behind him.

 

"Don't get your hopes up," Dana teased back, and pulled away to answer another knock at the front door.

 

To Mulder’s astonishment, he saw Margaret Scully armed with a shopping bag of gifts and a steaming casserole dish: the weapons of holiday warfare. Mulder took the bag and food, letting Mrs. Scully and Dana embrace on the porch. Mulder spotted Bill Scully parked on the curb. Bill’s hands remained on the steering wheel and his eyes stared straight ahead.

 

"Mrs. Scully, please come in." Mulder moved to take her coat, figuring a peace treaty had been negotiated for the holidays.

 

"The car's running." Dana's mother addressed her daughter from the porch and kept her coat on. The 'not setting foot under Mulder's roof' rule remained in place. "I came by for a moment. To see you and Emily, and drop everything off."  

 

"You can't stay? Or you won't stay?" Dana asked.

 

Mulder looked away, hands on his hips.   

 

"We'll be at Bill Junior's house if you and Emily can come by later," Mrs. Scully responded gently. "We'll go to Mass tonight. We'd love to see you." She smiled sadly and kissed her daughter's cheek, telling her to take care of herself and have a good Christmas.

 

"Okay, Mom," Dana answered, sounding young. "It will depend on how Emily feels tonight. Whether she can go out or not. I'll come to Mass if I can."

 

"I understand how difficult things must be for you sometimes," she said, glancing at Mulder for the first time. "But we miss you."

 

Mulder swallowed his pride and pleaded, "Stay. Please."

 

"I don't hate you, Mr. Mulder. But I don't think you're good for my little girl, and I'm not going to condone this."

 

Dana said, "Mulder is-"

 

"You don't even know me," Mulder interrupted, still staring at the doormat and feeling like the middle of an under-baked biscuit.

 

"I know enough to know you're dangerous and all my daughter is going to get from you is hurt. Again."

 

"Grammy!" Emily announced.

 

Mrs. Scully stooped to hug her, leaving Mulder to fume. 

 

"My sweetheart! How's my favorite granddaughter?"

 

"I'm your only granddaughter," Em said practically, with her arms around Mrs. Scully's neck. Dana tried to drape a coat over her. "That makes me the best," Emily said in unison with her grandmother. 

 

A taxicab rolled to a stop on the snowy street behind Bill’s car.

 

"Grammy only stopped by for a minute," Dana explained. "She's leaving. Say bye-bye to Grammy, honey."

 

A tall young man in sunglasses, blue jeans, and a leather motorcycle jacket emerged from the taxi. He slung an olive green duffel bag over his shoulder. Will absconded with Mulder's WWII Army-issue duffel, probably thinking the bullet holes in it made him look tough. Mulder hadn't told his son an angry French husband made those holes when Mulder, a few sheets to the wind during his 'show Phoebe' campaign, mistook a madam for a mademoiselle. Will liked his 'my father stormed the beach at Normandy' story, and it was a pity to ruin it with a factual account. Mulder was seasick and scared out of his wits at Normandy, and keeping track of his duffel bag was a far lower priority than not dying and not letting Byers or their men die.

 

"Will!" Mulder shouted from the porch, He hurried down the steps, passing Margaret Scully.  

 

"Daddy-O!" Will grinned as if assuming the welcoming party on the porch was for him. "Come pay the taxi. I don't have any American money!"

 

"What are you doing here? Dana said you weren't coming until later."

 

"I boarded a plane last night and it's five hours earlier here. Do the maths. Where is my car?"

 

"Still at the dealership." Mulder hugged his son, who hugged him back carefully. "I didn't get the memo it was Christmas yet. I was expecting you next week, but I have a key. We can go steal it, if you want."

 

"Cool. Committing a felony with my father."

 

Emily spotted Will and slipped out of the house, yelling for her "Bub! Bub!" She'd started calling Will her 'Bubby' while Mulder was in the hospital and now, thankfully, it was ‘Bub.’ Mulder didn’t know how the nickname originated, but Will hadn't discouraged her.

 

"You'll get sick. Get inside, Squirt!" Will ordered Emily, and slung her over his shoulder. 

 

Mulder paid the taxi driver. As he tucked his wallet back in his pocket, the passenger door of Bill's car closed. Margaret Scully turned to watch through the car window. Mulder exchanged silent, accusatory looks with Mrs. Scully, and followed Will and Emily to the porch where Dana stood waiting with coats. Dana scolded Emily and Mulder for going out in the cold, and greeted Will. Still, Mulder saw Dana look past him, watching Bill Scully's car as it drove away.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Something seemed intrinsically sad about rain falling on snow, even wrapped in his warm robe and watching from in front of a fire. It was a merciless ruin of innocence and beauty, one state of nature methodically eroding the other.

 

Mulder felt so angry his stomach quaked.

 

Headlights pulled into the driveway. Stopped. Through the bedroom window, Mulder saw Will get out and walk around to open Dana's door, dodging raindrops. The boy got back in the driver's seat. Before Dana reached the house’s side door, the new Thunderbird backed out of the driveway. The taillights glided down the block, made a slight slowing to acknowledge the stop sign, and disappeared.

 

Will had volunteered to drive Dana to and from Christmas Mass, which Mulder agreed to after extended promising and pleading. The boy must have expanded the agreement to include 'and go cruise around D.C., alone, without a license, looking for trouble on a dark, wet night.'

 

Mulder turned his head as his bedroom door opened and Hurricane Dana entered with the bottom six inches of her dress soaked. She had the clutching-the-dashboard pallor people developed after riding with William ‘Leadfoot’ Mulder, but her cheeks were dark from the cold. She took off her hat. Her hair curled from the dampness, giving her a surreal beauty that made her blue eyes seem enormous.

 

Crossing his ankles casually, Mulder followed her in his peripheral vision. He watched like a domesticated wolf: calm, seemingly approachable, but at its center, still a hunter. He still wanted her; wanting to throttle her didn't negate that. If anything, it intensified the primal need - to combine the sensual math of creation with an act of control. Not to truly hurt, but to strip away clothing and politeness, and in the chaos of passion, make her tell him the truth.

 

Managing that one-handed might be tricky.

 

After exchanging perfunctory 'Emily's asleep,' 'how was Mass?' and 'Will seems to like the car,' information like amicable strangers, Dana turned her back. She waved the hem of her skirt at the fireplace as she tried to dry it. From his chair, Mulder watched as if fixated on the fire.   

 

"I see England, I see France," Mulder begin, but shut his mouth and went back to staring at the hearth. Outside the window, the snow began to lose its battle against the rain and fall off the roof in big, sloppy clumps.    

 

"What are you reading?" Dana asked, breaking the tense silence.

 

"‘The Case for the UFO.’ Agent Dales loaned it to me." Mulder put down the paperback he’d forgotten he held. "I can't decide if it's supposed to be a factual account of alien visitation or pure science fiction. Though, for Agent Dales, those seem to be one in the same. Did the Navy ever station your father or brothers in Philadelphia?"

 

"Years ago. Why?"

 

"According to this book, a 1943 experiment in Philadelphia made an entire ship vanish and reappear in the Norfolk, Virginia shipyard a few minutes later. The Navy was testing Einstein's theories on time and space, and the test went wrong."

 

From in front of the fire, Dana looked over her shoulder. She gave Mulder her skeptical eyebrow.

 

"The ship reappeared in Philadelphia with the crew acting drunk and confused: fighting, cursing, talking to people who weren't there-"

 

"That’s shore leave."

 

"Then they burst into flames," Mulder finished triumphantly. "Agent Dales says he's interviewed eye witnesses."

 

"Bill never mentioned it," she said. "But I'll keep you posted. You'll be the first person I call if my big brother spontaneously ignites. Speaking of which: what happened in the kitchen? Why does it smell like you tried to broil cellophane?"  

 

"Dana, I tried to broil cellophane," Mulder said with mock dignity. "I got tired of the house smelling like Christmas trees and holiday cheer, so I scorched some plastic."

 

Dana shrugged and continued flapping the hem of her dress at the hearth.

 

"You'd think blenders would have a label saying whether or not they shave ice. Emily wanted a snow cone before bed," he confessed. "The snow outside was melting."

 

"You couldn’t tell her 'no'?" Dana took off her high heels as if considering whether they were salvageable. "Those two have eaten far too many sweets today. I'm amazed Will's not in a sugar coma. I thought he was driving me to Mass; where is he going? You're letting him drive alone? He doesn't even have a license."

 

"Don't tell me how to raise my son," Mulder snapped. "You're not his mother." He slouched down in the leather chair and stared at his tattered UFO book.

 

After another tense silence, Dana told Mulder goodnight. He glanced up as she headed for the bedroom door, carrying her ruined shoes.

 

"Don't go. That wasn't fair."

 

"No, it wasn't," she said tiredly, facing the door. "I do the best job I can with my daughter - and with Will - and I'm sorry if it doesn't live up to Phoebe Mulder's exacting maternal standards."

 

"Dana, I-I talked to Frohike this afternoon. He said-"

 

"I talked with him, too," she interrupted, her tone casual. Dana turned and held up one finger, wanting him to wait before he said anything else. "This is the program Mr. Frohike talked about, isn't it?" She turned up “The Man Called X” on the radio. "About the spy?"

 

"It's going off. X found the microfilm." Mulder tipped his head like the RCA puppy looking into the phonograph. "If you're trying to distract me by seducing me, change the station. “The Waltz Hour” is on next, and I don't think I can make love in three-quarter time with one fully-functioning arm."

 

She turned the dial until she found “Stormy Weather.” As Mulder watched, she closed the blinds. She pushed his bare feet aside and sat down on the ottoman facing him.

 

Mulder gritted his molars. At this point, he believed the military was conducting experiments on unwilling females. He'd even buy a covert eugenics movement with civilians since Uncle Sam knew the last names of a few women Mulder didn't. That was a short leap from the Nazi’s encouraging Aryan men and women to have illegitimate children and give them to the Nazi government. Dana was Aryan, but Mulder wasn't. The Nazis tried to exterminate Mulder’s genes, and the rest of the world didn't look favorably on them, either. In the light of day, without huge doses of pain medication, and once he could sit up on his own, eyes in the shadows seemed silly. Mulder was still there - his heart beating, lungs breathing. If someone wanted him dead, they hadn't wanted it badly enough to try a third time. Aside from a few police and bodyguards, he'd done nothing different, yet the third attempt hadn't come. He'd been a soldier, and thought Dana gave the military far too much credit.

 

“May I speak?” he asked tersely.

 

She nodded.

 

Mulder held up the newspaper clipping of the four of them in Central Park last year. "I'm not happy about this. I'm really unhappy, and I'm even unhappier with Frohike's explanation. Or lack thereof."

 

"I asked Mr. Frohike to put the picture in the paper and mention the communists," she admitted. "I couldn't protect you, I couldn't leave you, and I needed a way to generate public interest. Mr. Frohike offered a picture of you with Emily and Will, and every paper ran the story. They won't try to hurt you again. The public would demand an investigation and They don't want that publicity."

 

"Are we in 'Them's' bad graces again?" he asked sarcastically. "I'll send Them a fruit basket." He paused, getting his temper in check. "I know it was awful last month, trying to take care of me and everyone else. I know you were exhausted and frightened and everything was crazy, but... You know Will is off-limits to the press. I don't care if you think Martians are landing in the backyard-"

 

"My daughter’s in the picture, too."

 

"Off-limits," he repeated as if she hadn't spoken. "I trusted you."

 

"I know you trusted me. You don't think I agonized over this?" Her words tumbled over each other like water breaking through a crumbling dam. "I love you and Will, but I'd rather you be furious with me than be dead. I'm sorry I acted against your wishes, but I told you I'd keep you safe, and I will. No matter what."

 

"How did you convince Frohike to put Will's picture on the front page of every newspaper on the planet? You didn't just ask him nicely. Frohike likes you, but he works for me, and he knew how I'd react. You did or said something to convince him to release the photo."

 

"All I did was ask him," she responded.

 

"Melvin Frohike is as insanely paranoid as you, and I want to know what you told him. And explain this caption. Frohike said you wrote it. The photo wasn't taken December twelfth; you met Will in Central Park a week before Christmas. Why does the caption say the wrong date? There's no blue book, no paperclip in the picture. It doesn't make sense, yet you wrote it and Frohike put it in the papers. Why did he do this for you?"

 

"All I did was ask him," she repeated evenly.

 

Mulder hadn't been able to extract a better explanation from his agent either, despite some heated words. "How is my son's photograph in the newspaper accompanied by a fictional story and a nonsense caption supposed to keep me safe?"

 

She'd stopped looking at him and stared silently at the rug.

 

"You say you don't know what experiments happened when you were in the Army, or why Emily is sick, or what happened when you disappeared, but I think you do, at least in part," Mulder persisted. "I think you do know some pieces to this puzzle, and you have some idea how they fit together."

 

She didn't answer. His heart thudded angrily inside his chest.

 

"I was the one They kept trying to kill, according to you. I want to know why. When what you do, what you believe affects me, affects my child - you don't get to plead the Fifth. All I want is the truth, pure and simple. I want to know what to believe, even if it's Uncle Sam isn't my friend. Or if you changed your mind about more children. Or there was someone else, and you didn’t know how to tell me."

 

She flinched, and Mulder wished he could snatch the last sentence and shove it back into his mouth.

 

"The last time I told you the truth, you called me a liar," she reminded him. "Then you did the one thing I asked you not to do."

 

"Try me again," he offered. "The fellow I was a year ago - I wouldn't even recognize him."

 

She studied him a long time. He thought for an instant she might answer.

 

'I liked that fellow,' he heard her say, but her lips hadn't moved.

 

Mulder blinked, thinking his mind played tricks on him.

 

"Truth is rarely pure and never simple," she said, measuring each word. "It, that brilliant mind, and that hard head of yours would get you killed."

 

She put her hand over his heart as if feeling it beat.

 

Mulder watched her, not sure what came next. He kept telling himself he couldn't live like this, couldn't live with not knowing. They couldn't build a life on a stack of lies. The alternative though, was unthinkable.

 

"It takes 25,000 volts of electricity to power a television set. An electric eel can produce 600 volts," she told him. "The human heart takes 60 millivolts of electricity to beat. That's all. The impulse we call life? It's a collection of cells reacting to 60 millivolts of electricity. Atrial systole, ventricular systole, cardiac diastole: that's a heartbeat. Your heart - an athlete's resting heart - beats about 60 times a minute. About ninety-thousand times a day. Until one day, it doesn't. It takes one tiny clot, one embolism, one aneurism, one bullet damaging a vessel, and life ends."

 

Mulder’s anger began to melt like the snow outside. "I have you to thank for my most recent 3 million heartbeats. I know, Dana. I know you love me. I... Don't do it again."

 

"There won't be an 'again,'" she promised him.

 

"Okay," Mulder said.

 

Her blue eyes glistened, and her throat muscles moved as she swallowed. Whatever was happening, whatever the future held, at the end of the day, she made it all worthwhile.

 

She was hazardously beautiful.

 

"Mulder, I am sorry."

 

"I know."

 

After a few seconds, she stood, went to the dresser, and opened the top left drawer. Mulder picked up his UFO book again, but noticed she emptied the drawer rather than got her pajamas. Dana packed her things to leave.

 

Mulder asked what she thought she was doing.

 

"Will's here," she explained matter-of-factly.

 

"Not at the moment, he's not."

 

"You know what I mean."

 

"I suspect he's onto us." He put his book aside. "What did your mother-"

 

"Mom doesn't have to say anything. You’re right, Mulder; you are fine without me here. You don't need a nurse living with you, and that's what I'm doing."

 

"I don't need a nurse, but I do want one." He raised his hand, gesturing to her. "Come here."

 

She obliged him, leaving her neatly-folded clothes on the dresser and returning to take his hand. "This has to end sometime," she reminded him.

 

"I don't see why." He pulled her forward, onto his lap. The layers of crinoline bolstering her skirt spilled chaotically over the chair as she sat astride him, her face close to his. "Stay," he offered again and kissed her.

 

"Tonight?"

 

"Forever, if you want," he answered, his lips brushing hers.

 

She smiled sadly. "And you think I'm crazy."

 

He tucked a damp curl behind her ear. "In the hospital, my instructions were to not die and ask you again. I didn't die, and I'm asking you again."

 

"I know," was all she said.

 

He started unfastening the series of little pearl buttons down the front of her dress. Beneath the damp fabric, her skin felt cool and smooth, like fine marble. He traced the outline of her collarbone. "Did you know George Hale built the Palomar Observatory because an elf climbed through his window one night and told him to?"

 

"No, I didn't know. I don't hear elves, Mulder."

 

"It's true," he promised. "I don't want you leaving, and I don't want you living in sin with me. I know you love me. What's wrong? Why won't you marry me?" He studied her knowing, like the previous night, he missed some piece to this puzzle. He kept looking to her for a clue as to what it might be. "Is this where you tell me I deserve a normal life, and I say you are the only normal thing about my life?"

 

"I think so."

 

"You've put a lot of effort into saving a man you don't want."

 

"I never said I didn't want you," she whispered into his ear. Her warm breath made the hair on his neck prickle.

 

He unfastened the garters holding her right stocking and slid his hand up the curve of her backside as they kissed. The UFO book fell to the rug, and a moment later, her dress and crinolines joined it on the floor. That left some rigid bra-girdle-corset undergarment which reduced her waist to minuscule and required an engineering degree and a blowtorch to get through. Mulder surveyed it twice before she showed him a secret zipper down the front.

 

"Astounding - these miracles of modern technology," he said as the stiff white fabric peeled away, revealing her breasts.

 

She sank to her knees in front of his chair, and ran her hand up his thigh and to his groin. Mulder saw her imagining fellatio - planning what to do with her lips, tongue, hand. He saw her thoughts as he’d heard her inside his head a moment ago. As Dana unfastened his trousers, Mulder also sensed her uncertainty about pleasing him. Her hesitance at him climaxing in her mouth. He felt a storm of anger and fear inside her, with him at its center. And as he had their first time, a year ago, he felt certain she loved him.

 

She just didn’t know what to do with that love.

 

He blinked, and the odd vision and sensations vanished. He toyed with her wavy hair. “Sit back,” she instructed, so he did.

 

As she touched him, images returned, but this time of them in the bathroom off his bedroom. Mulder saw himself - whole and strong and standing naked - holding Dana with her slip and tweed skirt pushed up and her bare legs around his waist. She wore a pale blue sweater, but her girdle and stockings lay on the floor near a pair of high heels. Mulder hadn’t shaved, and the stubble from his face ground against her face and neck. He smelled his soap and shampoo, and felt his skin hot and damp from a shower. Dana’s back pressed against the hard tiles on the bathroom wall, and he felt himself thrusting deep inside her. He had a wonderful, tight, almost painful sensation of being filled, and of tension building at each stroke. He felt her orgasm - an explosion of pleasure different from a man’s. The vision jumped to Dana bent forward against the bathroom sink, on her tiptoes. In the mirror, Mulder saw Dana’s flushed face, and himself hurriedly taking her from behind.

 

Mulder had no recollection of any such passionate but impolite encounter.

 

In his bedroom, Dana’s every touch, even through his clothing, seemed intensified. He grimaced in pleasure, and her hand stopped moving. She had his trousers open but not yet off. He opened his eyes and found Dana watching him worriedly.

 

“I’m okay,” he assured her. “Better than okay. Let’s go to bed.”

 

“Are you sure?”

 

He nodded and slowly got to his feet. “I’ll let you do all the heavy lifting.”

 

She undressed, but Mulder left his T-shirt and shorts on. "I've seen scars before," Dana reminded him as she slid beneath the covers.

 

He shucked off his shorts but didn't answer. He ran his fingers down her face and neck, over her breast and down to her hip. "Dana, I'm not going to let you walk out of my life."

 

She didn’t speak, but Mulder saw her memory of him sprawled in the alley, bleeding, with Will and Emily helplessly watching him die. He felt Dana’s guilt and terror, but also her steel resolve to protect him.

 

Mulder studied her face in the firelight and, moving carefully, kissed her. He heard her promise she loved him, she’d do anything for him, though Dana couldn’t have spoken with his tongue in her mouth. As he touched between her legs, she inhaled. His heart beat faster, in time with hers. He stroked her clitoris, and a pulse of pleasure radiated through him, as well.

 

As they embraced, he felt the tug of her id at his. He wanted to push her onto her back, hold her down, be as roughly passionate as - Mulder realized - Dana remembered him being. Instead, he lay back, guided her on top of him, and watched as slowly, inch by inch, his body disappeared into hers.

 

The waves of pleasure bordered on pain. He felt sparks and champagne bubbles and things he didn't even have words for. Someone must have improved sex three-fold in the last months, and he was belatedly discovering it.

 

From her flushed face, her breathing, and the beads of sweat between her breasts, Mulder suspected the added pleasure wasn’t solely his. “Have we ever- With you on top?” he had to ask, and she shook her head ‘no.’

 

He put his hand on her hip, guiding her down, and to rock her hips against his. Even halfway inside her, even at the slight movement, she gasped. Mulder felt her pleasure - not only her body's embrace, but a sensation passing through him like he'd touched a live wire.

 

She rocked forward, and he thrust up, deeper inside her. Dana had her head tilted back and her mouth open. Her back arched, her hips rocked, her breasts bounced, and her fingers tightened against his good shoulder. She didn’t seem to need further instruction. Mulder’s body hummed and throbbed in syncopation with hers.

 

Mulder groaned, his molars clenched tight. Jesus Christ. Whatever was happening, he might not survive it, but he damn sure wouldn’t stop.

 

A few minutes and several orgasms later, she collapsed, panting and shaking her head she couldn’t continue. Mulder found himself kneeling behind her, with his hand on her damp back. He entered her hard, fast, because that was what she wanted. She didn't Mulder treating her as if she was fragile or broken. He saw the memory again of them in his bathroom: Dana had a mid-term exam in twenty minutes and, in his haste, Mulder had been less than gentlemanly.

 

‘Just like that, Mulder,’ he heard inside his head as if Dana said it aloud - though he knew she hadn't. ‘Oh my God, just like that.’

 

Every good sensation in the universe converged in his bedroom and passed from her body to his. Rockets exploded and angels wept as he made love to her exactly the way she remembered - and Mulder didn’t.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Three million sperm, Mulder thought drowsily. He kept his arm around Dana as they spooned up in bed, sweaty and spent and murmuring the things lovers say to each other in the dark. Across the room, the fire burned down to a liquid core, while Bessie Smith, Empress of the Blues, sang of her sad life on the radio.

 

Three million sperm all in search of one egg. A healthy couple had a twenty-five percent chance of conceiving a child each month, her medical textbook said. All it took was one in three million. In his drowsy, over-satiated state, Mulder wondered if they still had a chance of one in three million, regardless of what the doctors said.

 

"Are you asleep?" Dana whispered. 

 

"Mumm-hum," he responded, not wanting to exert the effort to move his lips. He adjusted the sheet to cover her, and relaxed, resting his hand on her hips and listening to the music, the fire, the rain, and the slow drip of the snow outside.

 

"I need to go back to New York, Mulder."

 

He nuzzled her neck and said sleepily, "Will can drive you; you'll be there in thirty-five minutes."

 

He felt her tense before she said, "Emily's anemia is getting worse. Her body's attacking her own red blood cells, and no one knows why. One solution is to remove her spleen, but that would further destroy her immune system. Dr. Scanlon has enrolled her in his experimental program in New York; she needs to begin treatment immediately." 

 

"She's that sick?" Mulder opened his eyes. "I thought she was getting better."

 

No, this surreal conversation wasn't happening. People didn't announce these things out of the blue nineteen minutes post-coitus.

 

After another hesitation, Dana said, "If the doctors try to boost her immune system, it destroys her red blood cells even faster. If they suppress her immune system, it slows the anemia, but she won't be able to fight off any germs. Something like a cold could kill her."

 

He sat up, disoriented in the darkness and still inebriated by the afterglow of lovemaking. "Is that what Dr. Scanlon told you yesterday?"

 

She faced away from him, but the back of her head nodded.

     

"His treatments can cure her?" he asked.

 

Mulder heard a wet, rushing sound as the last of the snow on the roof lost its battle with the rain and slid over the eaves, landing on the empty flowerbeds with a collective soggy plop.

 

“No,” she said. “Just forestall the inevitable.”

 

"I don't accept that. She's, she's pale and tired, and she still gets nosebleeds, but she's not d-dying."

 

Dana didn't answer.

 

He exhaled and said with as much conviction as he could muster, "All right. When does she need to be there? Should we have a nurse here while you're at school-"    

 

"I can't afford to take her back and forth every few weeks. The program is in New York. I can work in New York like I can here."

 

"But your school is here, your family's here," he argued.

 

"I'm not going back to medical school in January."

 

"You're quitting medical school and moving back to New York so Emily can see a doctor there. And despite being my bed - again - you're not marrying me." He made sure he had the facts straight. "It sounds like you have it all worked out. Thank you for telling me. Thank you for not letting me wake up to discover you and Emily gone.”

 

The back of her head didn’t respond.

 

“Dana, why can't you stay in Georgetown? I'm in Manhattan at least every other week, anyway. You and Em can come with me."

 

"Mulder, I told you I can't afford to take her back and forth to New York every month. I can barely pay my bills and tuition."

 

"But I can."  

 

"I can't take-"

 

"Are you misunderstanding the 'marry me' plan?"

 

"Don't-"

 

"You saved my life, Scully. Stay here, go to school if you want, take care of Em, and stop working in that horrible emergency room. Put on the ring, make your mother happy and, when you're certain, we'll set a date." He leaned over, burying his face in her damp hair. "I know you're afraid to love me, but at least let me try. Let me do this. Anything you want. I'll promise whatever you want. No more drinking, no more women. I'll put it in writing. Anything you want for Emily. I kept my part of the bargain. Say 'yes' and-"

 

"Please don't, Mulder." She burrowed farther into the feather pillow.

 

Right. So much for a more romantic proposal.

 

"That's William," she said as an engine died. A car door opened in front of the house. 

 

Mulder sat up and swung his feet over the edge of the bed. He reached for his robe. "One lecture coming up. You stay here; I'll bunk downstairs or down the hall. I don't think we're fooling a soul, but God forbid we don't keep up appearances."

 

"You're not your father," Dana said from behind him. "You're a good man."

 

He looked back at her, not understanding. "I try to be."

 

"You're not going to save Emily. I know you love her, but you can't bring back or atone for your sister by watching another little girl die."

 

"I know," Mulder responded automatically, but wondered if he did. "Sam's been gone for twenty-seven years. She's not coming back. I understand."

 

He waited, not sure what else to do or say, or even exactly what conversation they were having. However he’d heard her thoughts barely half an hour earlier - now he heard nothing, sensed nothing.

 

"You look at photographs of us with Will and Emily, and you see empty spaces. I know you do, Mulder."

 

He opened his mouth to lie but closed it and nodded she was correct. "That's not a new development," he said. "I told you last spring: whatever the price, you're worth it." Dana Scully would be the place where the tide of his life crested and rolled back. "I didn't leave you, and I'm not letting you leave me ever again. If you go back to New York, you'll find me sitting on your doorstep when you arrive. In the middle of winter. I'll probably catch pneumonia. You’ll have to nurse me back to health and we’ll end up in bed together and this story will start all over. It'd sure be a lot easier for you to stay here."

 

"You don't take 'no' for an answer, do you, Mulder?"

 

"Not when it comes to you, I don't."

 

After the longest four seconds of his life, she said, "Yes."

 

"Yes? Yes, you'll stay or yes, you'll marry me?"

 

"Yes," she repeated with more conviction. She scooted over to his side of the bed, but didn’t get up.

 

He pulled on his robe and fumbled with the cloth belt, not able to get his fingers to cooperate. Mulder settled for tying two square knots instead of a bow, meaning he would either have to cut his robe off later or wear it for the rest of his life. He wanted to ask one more time to make sure Dana hadn't changed her mind, but didn't want to take the chance she had.

 

"Check on Emily while you're up," Dana instructed as she adjusted what had been Mulder’s pillow and settled in for the night.

 

Mulder nodded stupidly and headed for the bathroom mirror to recheck his reflection. 

 

*~*~*~*

 

A single picture or sensation, either in the mind or on film stock, could capture the zeitgeist of an era. For the folks at home, World War II was the last innocent war, frozen in time by Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima and a mushroom cloud lazily unfolding over Nagasaki. Victory looked clean, efficient, and heroic, paving the way for suburbia, Detroit cars gleaming with chrome, and a generation who liked Ike.

 

For the soldiers of WWII, the images were more intimate: the face of a fallen comrade, the way wet sand squished under combat boots on D-Day, or the smell of gunpowder and death hanging over a ruined village. They got Dear John letters, ate powdered eggs for breakfast forty days straight, and counted out francs to a Paris prostitute because a scared eighteen-year-old GI didn't want to die a virgin.

  

For Mulder, those years could be condensed to the dull ache in his chest as he watched a beautiful little boy with big brown eyes standing on a London doorstep, holding a fishing pole as he scanned the V-E Day crowds hopefully. The Allies won, the soldiers returned home, and Daddy had telephoned and said they would go fishing.

 

Fishing seemed like a good, honest, father-son thing to do.

 

Seeing his son for the first time in years, Mulder stopped across the street, taking in the school uniform of short pants, loafers, knee socks, and a white shirt. Someone - a nanny or grandmother probably - had attempted to slick down the brown curls. William watched each passing man as though he could see their soul with his dark eyes.

 

Their eyes met across the street. Mulder grinned. He slung his duffel bag over his shoulder and started pushing his way through the jubilant masses of Piccadilly Circus. Will smiled back politely, but continued to scan the crowd in search of his father.

 

The ache had started.

 

William wouldn't remember a time without Allied soldiers and Nazis and rationing and hiding in subway tunnels as bombs exploded. Will, with all the decorum afforded by his six years and four months, scrutinized the uniformed GI's as he tried to figure out which man was his father. He had no memory of a world not at war, as he had no memory of a Daddy outside of a voice on the telephone.       

 

May 8, 1945. V-E Day. Victory Day. It was a Monday, of course.        

 

Will leaned out of the doorway, craning his head to see far down the packed street. Winston Churchill addressed Britain on a hundred radios at once while housewives in third and fourth floor windows cheered and waved flags.

 

The world Mulder walked through was a silent, colorless place. His boots made no sound as he crossed the cobblestones, and he seemed to push cobwebs aside instead of the corporeal, teaming masses. "William?" Mulder heard his own voice ask from far outside his body. "Hello, William."

 

"Hello," the boy responded in his British accent, the 'o's and 'i's rounded out by an expensive school and a French nanny. One of the few insights Phoebe ever gave Mulder into her heart was wanting their son to have the best, to have the comforts and privileges she had not. Mulder tried to see William got them.

 

"Hello," Mulder said. He squatted down and waited, but the child didn't come to him for a hug or kiss.

 

"My name is William," the boy informed his father, seeming to have inherited the tendency to say useless things when nervous. "I am William Adam Mulder."

 

"I-I know. I know your name is William. I'm your father. I'm, uh, the one who named you. When did you get so big, Will?" He bit his lip uncertainly.

 

"I've been drinking milk. Are we going fishing? Where is your fishing pole? If you don't have one, you may use mine," Will offered generously.

 

"I thought we might be able to make one. I was going to buy one, but the stores are closed today. Everyone's celebrating."

 

"You talk funny. Like on the telephone." 

 

Laughing, Mulder conceded, to William's ears, he did sound funny.

 

"You are one of the American GI's." Will looked Mulder's worn uniform up and down, and sounded as if he had suspected that was the case.

 

"I am. I have to go back to my men soon, but I'll come back and I'd like us to be friends."

 

"Do you kill the Germans?"

 

"I do what I have to do, Will," Mulder hedged, with the memories of the death camp barely a week old.

 

"Is the war really over? There won't be any more bombs?"

 

Will was a composed little fellow, with eyes that had seen too much. He looked more like Mulder than his mother, the features softer on his small face. He wasn't technically a Jew. His mother wasn't a Jew, but it wouldn't have made a difference to the Nazis. If Hitler had taken Britain, William would have been taken from his mother and herded into a boxcar and shipped away to certain death.

 

"Daddy?" William asked uncertainly.

 

"There won't be any more bombs, son," Mulder promised and all the blood and death and nightmares became worth it. "Are you ready to go? Do we need to tell your mother you're leaving?"

 

Mulder glanced up, hoping to see Phoebe at an upstairs window. She wasn't coming back. Maybe though, Mulder would wave and she would wave back, and they could at least be friends. Instead, Phoebe’s mother watched. She gestured to Mulder he could take Will and go; the attorneys had worked out the details.

 

"Mother's not at home. Grandmother is resting."

 

"So you're ready to go?" Mulder stood, offering Will his hand. He wanted so badly to make physical contact: to pick the child up and swing him around and embrace him tightly and swear Daddy would never go away again. 

 

He wanted not to be alone.    

 

"I'm a big boy. I don't hold hands," Will informed him haughtily, and picked up his tackle box.

 

"All right." Mulder’s heartbeat hurt. "Stay close. I wouldn't want to lose you."

 

*~*~*~* 

 

"Dad," Will's voice insisted. Mulder winced at the hand shaking his good arm. "Wake up, Daddy-O."

 

"Yeah. What? I'm awake," Mulder mumbled. He pushed the blanket aside and sat up on the sofa. "What's wrong?" Mulder put his hand on his chest as though he said a painful Pledge of Allegiance. The doctor hadn't specifically forbidden sexual intercourse, but Mulder hadn't asked and the good doctor hadn't specifically suggested it, either.    

 

"Are you okay?"

 

"I'm all right. Just sore. What's wrong? Why are you awake? What happened? Are you okay?" After blinking and rubbing his eyes, Mulder squinted at Will, who was fully dressed at four-thirty in the morning. "Are you just getting in?" He bet what was statistically most probable, though Mulder could have sworn he'd given one lecture tonight. "Didn’t you come home once?"

 

"I've been home since ten; I haven't been to bed. Dana's having a bad dream. I'd thought you were with her, but remembered you were downstairs. She's asking for you."

 

"Okay." His teenage son heard Dana begging and struggling to get away, and assumed his father was 'with' her. What wonderful conjecture. This kind of thing could cause years of psychotherapy bills. Mulder started to ask if Will couldn't tell the difference between the sounds of fear and the sounds of passion, but, in his half-awake brain, realized no answer the boy might give would be acceptable.  

 

"It's a bad one," Will added.

 

"I'll check on her." Mulder stood and put one foot in front of the other toward the stairs. "Thank you. You can go back to sleep."

 

"I wasn't asleep. I'll make coffee," Will answered from the foyer, and strolled off to the kitchen.

 

"Go to bed, William," Mulder ordered, but continued being ignored.

 

He sighed and headed upstairs. The fire in the hearth was glowing coals, casting weak shadows over the bed. Dana had put on pajamas after Mulder left. Now, sound asleep, she fought the faceless Them and begged Mulder to help her.

 

He would. He'd get a rifle, a checkbook, or a marriage license and help her, but he didn't know how. She wouldn't tell him.

 

"I'm here," Mulder told her. "You're dreaming, honey. It's okay." 

 

"Please don't take her. Please don't," she pleaded with him, and tried to push him away. "Hurts." 

 

A familiar pang of guilt stabbed at his gut. "Nobody's going to hurt you. Nobody's going to take Emily. I'm right here. I'm not going leave you or hurt you."

 

"Mulder?" Dana opened her eyes, but remained sound asleep. "You're here?"

 

"I'm here. You're dreaming. What is it, honey? Did I hurt you? What are you so afraid of?"

 

"I'm so sorry, Mulder." She rolled away from him and pulled herself into a little ball. "Too late. It's too late."

 

"It's okay," he assured her, having no idea what he assuaged. 

 

"They took the baby," she sobbed. She covered her head with her arms the way schoolchildren practiced in case of a nuclear bomb. "You hate me."

 

"Why? Why did They take the baby?" He'd believe anything. He'd believe little green men from Venus whisked the baby away in a spaceship to ensure world peace if she'd give him an answer.

 

"I don't know! What are you, Mulder?"

 

He moved back a few inches. "I-I-" he stuttered as she continued to cry.

 

Ignoring the screaming pain in his chest and shoulder, Mulder gathered her up, holding her and waiting for the nightmare to stop. She seldom woke up anymore, but the frightened gasps would eventually slow, the pleading would end, and her muscles would relax as her demons dissipated into the night. 

 

"Where are you in these dreams?" he asked softly, as her face relaxed into deep, thoughtless sleep. “Who’s hurting you?”

 

She didn’t respond, but did shift on his lap so her hair fell over her face. The smell of coffee wafted up the steps and down the hall, staving off the cold of the icy-gray winter dawn.

 

"What am I, Dana? Do you know? You saved my life, and all you ask is I don't ask you any questions. All I have is questions. If you're afraid to love me, I don't blame you, but I'm scared as hell to love you. You think I'm dangerous? You're dangerous, honey. You're either completely insane or completely right, and it scares the shit out of me either way."

 

Mulder rolled her onto the down pillow and, after listening to make sure William stayed downstairs, curled up behind her. To Mulder’s surprise, Dana put her hand over his as she slept. Wet paths of tears still glistened on her cheek. On her left ring finger, the glint of a large diamond caught his eye. He'd put the ring on earlier, as Dana slept, and she left it. She must have noticed it when she woke and put on her pajamas, but she’d left it.

 

If at first you don't succeed, get shot and try again.

 

The old ring glistened, and a realization settled over him. One of those moments life surged forward, forever transforming a man. Mulder was getting married. To her. Their American dream might have veered off-course and been damaged in route, but the dream remained alive. Whatever the future held, they would face it together.

 

His chest ached again, but not from the wounds. He hurt like a gentle, glowing ball inside him expanded, massaging away pain as it blossomed out. Despite the cold, miserable night, they didn’t need the fireplace; Mulder would have been warm in the Arctic, and he felt incandescent.

 

That was the big secret: love, when it was real, was everything it should be. Wonderful and terrifying. Messy and dangerous. The hardest thing in the world. Worth the wait, and worth anything it cost him.

 

And Mulder had a great deal.

  

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder had his FBI files out, his old gray shirt on, and a cup of tea cooling in one hand. Dana cooked something in the kitchen, and all seemed right with the world.

 

Emily assembled an imaginary crime scene on the living room rug with the family from her new dollhouse and Will's old metal soldiers. Over and over, two WWII infantrymen with rifles shot the plastic Daddy. As Plastic Daddy lay on the rug, Plastic Mommy administered what was supposed to be cardiopulmonary resuscitation, but looked like it should be done in the privacy of their cardboard bedroom. The Plastic Boy and Plastic Girl watched until a metal tank and two Allied generals came and took Plastic Daddy away. Eventually, Plastic Daddy got wrapped in toilet tissue from chin to knee, came home in the Sherman tank, and got to sleep in his plastic bed.

 

"How's he doing, Doctor Scully?" Mulder asked from his desk.

 

"He'll be fine, but he needs to rest," Emily told him sternly. "You have to play quietly."

 

He leaned back in his desk chair, the file open on his legs. "I think Mulder is feeling better."

 

"That's not you, Mulder." Emily held up the Plastic Daddy. "This is Muldon."

 

Mulder put the FBI file on his desk and leaned forward in the chair. "So who is this? Dina?" He pointed at the Plastic Mommy.

 

"Mommy," she told him like he was dim. "She's a nurse and a mommy."

 

"And a good cook." His appetite returned, and the smell from the kitchen was mouthwatering. "Dana," he called.

 

Dana nudged the kitchen door open as she dried her hands on her apron.

 

"I am Muldon from the Planet Charmin," he informed her. "I require sustenance. What's for lunch?"

 

"Vegetable soup and grilled cheese sandwiches."

 

"Ooh." He pursed his lips happily. "I love you so much."

 

"More than strawberry milkshakes?" she asked coyly.

 

"Far more. In fact-" He reached for the little binder clip to close the file. He didn't want the pictures spilling out and Emily seeing them. "I'm calling Will and-"

 

Mulder looked at his hand. The clip slid a few inches across his desk and rested between the index finger and thumb of his right hand.

 

His heart thudded loudly inside his chest. He'd seen it move this time. He'd wanted it, and it moved.

 

Mulder looked back at Dana.

 

Dana smiled at him from the kitchen doorway. Emily hauled Plastic Muldon back and forth to the hospital.

 

"I-I'm calling Wonder Boy in New York and bragging about my grilled cheese," he finished, floundering through the sentence.

 

"William's probably having quail eggs and foie gras," she responded.

 

Mulder turned the binder clip in his hand. He stood and slipped it into the pocket of his trousers. "Dana, I want to make a telephone call, and then c-could I get my grilled cheese to take with me?"

 

"I can wrap it up. Where are you going?"

 

"I have a quick question for Agent Dales. I'll be back in plenty of time."

 

"Okay," she answered easily, and returned to the kitchen.

 

*~*~*~*

 

It felt odd to be behind the wheel of a car again. Mulder had driven a few times - taking Dana on local errands - but since he came home from the hospital, he seldom left the house.

 

Mulder drove a few blocks before he pulled into the parking lot of a closed hardware store and put the car in park, rethinking his decision. He twisted the Cadillac's rearview mirror and asked his reflection again, “What am I?”

 

He could drive to the FBI and ask Agent Dales. If it was bizarre, Dales had seen it - or at least, claimed to have seen it. Dales went on for hours about UFO's and conspiracies and xeno-transplantation and having a brother who'd met an alien, once. Mulder trusted Dales to keep a secret, but Dales was crazy. One-hundred percent, pure Peruvian bat shit crazy. Dales swirled the world 'extraterrestrial' around in his mouth, savoring it the way baseball fans savored statistics and the French savored fine wine.

 

Mulder could ask Walter Skinner, who was unquestionably sane and one of the good guys, but Mulder's security clearance remained probationary. He hadn't gotten an FBI go-ahead on his research. Mulder had FBI files because Mr. Skinner kept handing them to him. Mulder damn sure wasn't moving any pencils with his mind for the Assistant Director. American boys wanted to be Fox Mulder when they grew up, but Fox Mulder had wanted to be an FBI agent.

 

The hunt for Reds grew so rabid speaking German or Russian in public was unwise. It took one accusation, and anyone different was suspect: intellectuals, liberals, vegetarians, artists. Dividing a lemon pie equally among friends could be construed as communist activity if Hoover or Senator McCarthy wanted it to be. One hint Mulder was anything but what some official deemed moral and patriotic... Mulder, his friends, and his family would be untouchables. Mulder would be out of a job - any job. Will would be out of Packer Institute. The people who knew Mulder or worked with him could either denounce him or have their lives torn apart as well. Mulder couldn't imagine what J. Edger Hoover would say about an all-American baseball hero announcing he had telekinesis and telepathy. There wouldn't be a humiliating senate committee hearing; they'd label Mulder insane and lock him away for the rest of his life.

 

Mulder couldn't imagine what Dana would say, either. Mulder liked science fiction and ghost stories. Dana liked facts and reason and worlds she could hold in her hands. Even what she told him about Emily's birth was scientifically possible, if far-fetched. This, though - she'd say it was pain medication or stress or shell shock. If Dana saw it, she'd say folie a deux. And if he could prove it real... Mulder couldn't decide which scenario would turn out worse: if she believed him or if she didn't.

 

He'd been engaged for five days.

 

Mulder had too much at stake, especially since his evidence consisted of an old pencil, a binder clip, and some pillow talk.

 

He stared at his reflection for several minutes, and started toying with things in the Cadillac. He couldn't will the door to unlock or the radio to come on. He couldn't make Dana's lipstick roll across the seat toward him. Mulder tried, but he couldn't do a damn thing.

 

He started thinking of what the doctors said about brain damage, and he felt foolish.

 

So he could - perhaps - move office supplies and detect the occasional intimate thought and sensation. If it was real, it was a party trick. He'd add it to his arsenal of party tricks. If it wasn't real, he had brain damage or shell shock or psychosis.

 

All he wanted to be was normal. All he'd ever wanted to be was normal.

 

Mulder’s heart beat and his left hand worked. Will and Emily remained alive and somewhat well. There was vegetable soup at home, and FBI files, and a pretty little redhead who, last night, let him help her study human anatomy in bed. The areola, the mons Venus, the labia minora and the clitoris: he’d reviewed them with his tongue, to be thorough. Mulder was getting married on a future, though yet to be determined, date.

 

Mulder turned the car around and drove back home, walking in the door about twenty minutes after he left. Dana asked what happened. Mulder told her the truth: he changed his mind. He didn't need to talk with Agent Dales after all.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder loved seeing Dana dressed in a fancy gown and high heels, with her hair pulled up and lips painted a deep red. He loved the soft textures of her and the way her dress rustled and skirt swayed. He loved even the way other men looked at her and envied him.

 

The line of limousines and expensive cars in front of the Willard Hotel stretched so far back from the valet Mulder’s car was barely off Pennsylvania Avenue.

 

Dana smelled like something exotic, and the frothy skirt of her dress looked like a mille-feuille, the French pastry made of layer upon layer of cream and cake. She wore a little fur cape and the delicate pearl and diamond earrings Mulder gave her for Christmas last year. He stole a look earlier, and underneath her fancy dress she wore silk stockings and garters and a lacy strapless corset he'd have to watch as she took off later tonight. Alternately, if he asked and it was physically feasible, she might leave the stockings and high heels on.

 

Dana leaned over to straighten his black bow tie as they waited. She'd tied it. Mulder still couldn’t fasten his right cufflink, but she took care of it, as well.

 

"Is that a size 6 Balenciaga dress from Bergdorf Goodman, by any chance?" he asked curiously. "1953 winter collection? Ivory and copper?"

 

"It might be," she told him. "It was in a Bergdorf Goodman box when it showed up on my doorstep in Brooklyn. How did you know?"

 

"I'm a good guesser," Mulder lied. "Weren't there three dresses?" He shared his closet space now, and he'd noticed this dress and a long cream satin gown, still in a plastic cover and taking up more space than seemed fair. "Where's the blue one?"

 

"It got ruined."

 

"When? How? I liked that one. It was pretty, and it had good memories." Also, it cost as much as a new Buick.

 

"When you were shot, Mulder," Dana said gently. "I was wearing it that night. It got blood on it."

 

"Oh." He didn't remember. "So more than a year, and you've only gotten to wear two of the three gowns? I need to take you out on the town more."

 

"It's been an eventful year," she reminded him.

 

"True."

 

Her long white gloves lay folded on her lap, and her engagement ring glittered brightly on her finger. The ring looked out of proportion for her hand, dating from an era of more ornate jewelry. There was a large, square, center diamond surrounded by smaller ones set in white gold filigree. The ring had belonged to Mulder’s grandmother - a notion taken by a wealthy bridegroom wanting to be modern for his young Jewish bride - and Mulder remembered seeing it on his Safta Fuch's hand when he visited her as a boy. His mother hadn't wanted the ring, but he thought his Grandma Fox would be pleased it found a home on Dana's hand.

 

"This is the New Year's Eve event for Washington's social elite, according to Melvin Frohike," Mulder told her.

 

"Do we know any of Washington's social elite?"

 

"I know the mayor; his dog has a favorite spot on my lawn. I've met President Eisenhower. I wouldn't count him as a close friend, though." He let the car idle forward a bit. "They sent me an invitation. I suppose that means we get to show up."

 

"I think we should make sure we have the invitation to show them at the door, just in case."

 

As they came within sight of the front door of the elegant hotel, he saw hordes of photographers, their flashbulbs popping as the guests arrived. "Are you going to put your gloves on before we get out of the car?"

 

"Should I?" Dana asked. "I was going to wait until we were inside, but I can put them on. I didn't want to get them dirty."

 

"Up to you," he told her. "But if you decide not to, the second I help you out of this car and they notice you wearing a ring, we are going to be the talk of the town. 'Yankee Legend Finally Wears Down Beautiful Nurse Who Saved His Life. Wedding at Coney Island to Follow.'"

 

"'Manhattan's Most Brilliant and Quirky Bachelor No Longer Eligible,'" she supplied. "'Still Quirky.'"

 

"'She's Difficult, But I Love Her, Mulder Admits,'" he offered.

 

"'He's Right; I Must Be a Little Crazy, Fiancée Says.'"

 

"You could put the gloves on. Or we could drive off," Mulder said. "Go home, eat vegetable soup, and watch television until we fall asleep. Or we could stay here, dance the night away, ring in 1955, and give them something to talk about tomorrow morning. I don't have a room upstairs at this hotel, but I'm sure they'll rent me one if I ask. We could arrange a private party."

 

Dana turned her head to look at him. "That's what you meant," she said. "Last year, I thought you meant The Plaza’s New Year’s Eve party."

 

"You were very tipsy and charmingly naive." He let the car roll forward again. "Whatever Maidenform armor you're wearing under that dress: is it the kind where the panties are part of the skirt of your corset, or separate?"

 

"It's two pieces: a strapless, long-line brassier and an open-bottom girdle. Women don't wear corsets anymore, Mulder."

 

"You could have fooled me, but you didn't answer my question."

 

"It's tough to be a woman of mystery around you."

 

"My dexterity is impaired, and my lingerie correspondence course predates Christian Dior’s wasp waist craze. I need to know in case I decide to get you liquored up and take advantage of you later. Could you define 'open bottom'? Does this girdle-corset-skirt-garment go up, off, or require two weeks' notice?"

 

They waited second in line, and the photographers readied cameras and screwed in fresh flashbulbs.

 

"It's a big party," Dana said casually, as if she still wouldn’t answer. "If we’re spending the night, you might get a room now." She picked a speck of lint off her skirt. "Up."

 

"Up?" Mulder echoed.

 

Her head nodded.

 

"You're serious? Right now?"

 

"No, not right now, Mulder. Inside the hotel, upstairs, and as soon as humanly possible. Don't mess up my dress or hair before the party," she instructed.

 

Mulder glanced at her dress and her stiletto heels, doing a quick calculation of their current height difference. “A high bed or dresser, and a big mirror?”

 

Dana’s butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her mouth expression didn’t change. “That sounds lovely.” She nodded toward the Willard Hotel’s front entrance. “Tell the desk clerk you need a room with thick walls or no neighbors.”

 

Even though they were fifteen feet from the red carpet, Mulder shoved the gearshift into park. As an angry car horn honked behind him and the valet and press hurried over, Mulder informed her huskily, "For the record, Scully, you are the most beautiful, sexy, brilliant woman I've ever met."

 

She gave him a nefarious smile.

 

Mulder had made love to her a dozen times he remembered - and a several times he didn't remember - and for the record, he was hopelessly out of his league.

 

The valet opened his door. Dana's gloves were still in her hand. Mulder put one foot out but turned back to her. "They'll spend twenty minutes taking pictures, and you'll be tomorrow's headline, Gorgeous. Are you sure?"

 

She continued smiling her secret smile, and her gloves stayed off, so he walked around the car. The photographers took a few photos of Mulder in his tuxedo, but they were waiting for Dana to emerge.

 

A valet opened her door, and Mulder took her bare right hand. The camera lenses focused. As Mulder helped her out, she whispered to him, "Let's give them something to talk about."

 

"Then...?"

 

"Yes, then," she assured him, as the flashbulbs popped like fireworks.

 

*~*~*~*

 

End - A Moment in the Sun, part IV


	3. Chapter 3

Begin: A Moment in the Sun, part V

 

*~*~*~*

 

For most of America, 1954 unfolded as soft and promising as the lines of a graceful woman's back. It was a polite, optimistic time in a polite, optimistic country. People knew their place, trusted their leaders, and still thought the last two words of “The Star-Spangled Banner” were “play ball.” 

 

For Fox Mulder, however, by the second week, 1954 went bad, got worse, and as things started to level out, descended into abysmally shitty. A classic love story unfolded: man gets girl, man loses girl to some shadowy hush-hush conspiracy, finds girl, but gets dumped, drunk, lost, found, loved, and shot and left for dead. Those people claiming “it gets worse before it gets better,” - they had it right. Those people were depressing and infuriating, but right.

 

But those myopic souls who believed faith, truth, and love conquered all - well, they occasionally had it right, too. At the end of the road less traveled by, the idealists waited, starry-eyed and adamantly maintaining they knew all along things would work out. As a spectator sport, romance looked simple. Those who played the game played with fire; love could warm a man's heart or consume his soul.

 

Or both, if he got lucky.

 

Happiness didn’t mean having everything Mulder wanted; it meant wanting everything he had. And sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel flickered back on when he least expected it.

 

It was 1955.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder stayed motionless in the dark for several seconds. He listened to his heartbeat marking the passage of time as he tried to figure out what awakened him, what was wrong. Georgetown was still, comfortable in her gracious silence and preferring to keep her secrets behind closed mahogany doors. The air of an early spring night stole in through the open window; the breeze licked its crisp, insistent tongue into the corners of his bedroom and teased the dark hair on his bare arms and legs.

 

Hearing a cough, Mulder got up to check on Emily. He stretched and pulled on his pajama bottoms to join his T-shirt. Barefooted, he padded down the hall to what Dana dubbed “fairyland,” complete with a white canopy bed, unicorn wallpaper, and pony-sized rocking horse from FAO Schwarz - another example of Mulder's inability to say ‘no’ to a child.

 

Emily slept with her head and shoulders cushioned in the valley between two pink pillows. A vaporizer hummed, breathing warm menthol mist, while a miniature porcelain carousel twinkled on the nightstand, keeping away the monsters. After checking her forehead, Mulder returned what remained of stuffed Kitty to her arms and pulled the pink blanket over her chest. Before he got five feet from the bed, Emily pushed the blanket off again.      

 

A light glowed around Will's door. Mulder hadn't heard Will since midnight, which might mean the boy had mastered scaling the tree in the front yard and sneaking in and out through his bedroom window. It was suspicious if William made it home by curfew.

 

Mulder knocked and stuck his head into the room. He found his son lounging in an undershirt and blue jeans, a music magazine in one hand, a telephone receiver in the other, and a steady stream of charming, practiced bullshit pouring out of his mouth. Will was good; somewhere in the world, a fifteen-year-old girl's father should be very, very afraid.

 

Mulder held up two fingers, reminding his son of the hour, and drew his index finger across his neck in an 'off with his head' gesture. The wooing hour must come to an end. Will pantomimed some theatrics. The boy acquiesced and promised “Trixie” he'd look her up when he was in town again, as though William was a sailor with a girl in every port.

 

“Trixie?” Mulder mouthed incredulously.    

 

Grinning, Will put down his magazine to outline a generous hourglass in the air, summarizing the girl's attributes.   

 

Mulder rolled his eyes and closed the door, knowing his son wouldn't go to sleep. Will refined the sloth and decadence of Easter break to an art, and he'd never waste a second by sleeping. He could sleep later, during his time in an expensive private school.

 

As Mulder returned to bed, Dana shifted in her sleep. She rolled away and exposed a smooth thigh and shoulder as the white sheet draped her like a Roman goddess. Mulder trailed a finger down each vertebra of her bare back as he looked past her and out the open window at the vast night sky. He saw the stars - the same mysterious patterns that watched back since a time before memory.

 

"Beautiful," he whispered to her as he traced the outline of her hip and weighed the teardrop of her breast. "Perfect." 

 

He moved closer to Dana. Mulder draped his arms and legs around her so his body surrounded hers. He kissed her shoulder, and she melted into him. He pressed his lips to her neck, her earlobe, her jaw; he pressed his hips against her bottom. She inhaled, shifted, relaxed, and sighed contentedly. He found no thoughts inside her mind, just calm trust and instincts slowly awakening. As he touched her, he felt her pleasure beneath his hands as he felt her skin grow warm. The sensation grew and flowed through Mulder like light through a prism. He felt her the way scientists detected infrared – there but hidden from the naked eye. Two bodies, two experiences intertwined. Not the same, but counterpoint and complementary, like harmonious chords. Mulder suspected Dana could feel his sensations as well, but she didn’t know that wasn't normal. This frightening new talent of his: it had benefits.

 

She rolled toward him, opened her eyes, and smiled lazily, like a lioness at rest. “Again?” he heard but knew enough not to answer aloud.

 

Always, he told her silently. She closed her eyes, slid her hand beneath the fabric of his T-shirt and from his abdomen around to his back. She pressed her warm lips to the hollow of his neck, letting him love her.

 

He had her; she was safe. Everyone was safe. Nothing lurked out there. Just his imagination getting the best of him.  

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder blinked at the clock, and the clock blinked back like a Siamese cat. Time was a universal invariant. Mulder could squint at it all he wanted, but it would still be 6:00. Normally, he didn't mind the early hour but - with a forty-year-old body functioning on three hours sleep - another few minutes of rest would be nice.

 

6:00

 

The other side of the bed was empty, so he replaced his pillow with Dana's since his pillow smelled like hair and hers smelled like a beautiful woman. Mulder scratched his stubbly jaw and moistened his lips before he sighed contentedly and closed his eyes.

 

6:36

 

No, that couldn't be right. Mulder rubbed the sand from his eyes and looked again. Big hand on the six, little hand on the-

 

6:36  

 

Blink.

 

6:37

 

"Dad!" Will shouted impatiently from downstairs in harmony with Dana's "Mulder!"

 

"All right," Mulder muttered. He rolled out of bed and stumbled toward the bathroom. "Coming." 

 

After Mulder washed any parts that might smell offensive or incriminating, he leaned his forehead against the tile wall of the walk-in shower, savoring the hot water on his back. The garbage truck squealed to a stop in the alley. He heard Will and Emily and Dana's voices in the kitchen below, punctuated occasionally by pots and pans and banging cabinets and the sounds of morning. Assured his universe was in order and running generally on schedule, Mulder turned the faucet and closed his eyes as the water pulsed down harder, punishing his skin and, like making love, drowning out everything outside his body for a few moments.

 

He heard a knock on the bathroom door, and Dana asked from the doorway if he was ready. Will had an eight o'clock flight back to New York. Phoebe celebrated her thirty-fifth birthday for about the ninth year in a row, and cordially required Will's presence. Mulder resisted the urge to send his former 'child bride' a dozen white roses, all past their prime.

 

"Almost," Mulder called to Dana over the sound of the water. He shifted so the harsh spray massaged the back of his shoulder instead of the top. 

 

"Are you sure? He can call a taxicab. You're never going to be ready in time. I'm calling a taxi. Mulder? Are you even listening to me, Mulder?"

 

"Um-hum." He leaned his forearms and forehead against the slick wall of the shower, letting the water sting his back and flow over his hips and legs until it reached the tiles on the floor and swirled away.

 

"Mulder, are you all right?"

 

"I'm coming," he called back. “Tell him to wait.”

 

Mulder turned off the faucet and reached for a towel. He gave himself the once over, wrapped the towel around his waist, and stepped out. His shoulder still felt unhappy. He shrugged it a few times, wincing, and rubbed it, trying to ease the ache.

 

"You're hurting?" Dana's voice asked.

 

He looked up. She stood in the bathroom.

 

"Yes." He reached for a second towel and draped it around his neck, covering some of the scars. "Did you need something?" he asked uncomfortably.

 

She cleared her throat, ducking her head in a way he'd have found charming if he wore more than a few square feet of terrycloth and didn't look like he lost a knife fight. The last time she saw him shirtless was in December, when the wounds healed enough that they no longer needed bandaged.

 

"No, I- I- You need to leave in about ten minutes if Will is going to make his plane. I don't think- I'm sorry; I didn't mean to embarrass you."

 

"I'm not embarrassed," he lied. "I think we've seen plenty of each other, but do I barge in if you're taking one of your all-afternoon baths?"    

 

"Yes, you do barge in - all the time, in fact. You're hurting? Your shoulder or your chest?" She tried to touch his chest.

 

Mulder put his palms over scars and backed away like a shy bride protecting her breasts. "Don't. I'm fine, Dana."

 

"Don't what?"

 

"Leave me alone," he answered, surprised at how childlike he sounded. 

 

"Mulder, I'm a nurse, and they're just scars; they're not even bad scars." She ran her fingers over his chest, trying to get him to move his hands. "The doctors did a good job. Where are you hurting?"

 

"Everywhere. I got quite a bit of exercise and not much sleep last night."

 

"Do you feel any pressure on your chest? Any numbness or tingling? Any trouble breathing?"

 

"No. No," he insisted. Shrugging away, Mulder said, "Come on, honey; I'm fine. I'm just sore. I used to be an athlete; I know what a sore muscle is. I need to hurry or Will's going to miss his plane."

 

She didn't budge. Dana caressed his arms and kissed above his heart.

 

"I don't think you can kiss it and make it better, Dana," he told her sarcastically.

 

"I would if I could."

 

He sighed. "I know."

 

She managed to peel one of his hands away. She touched the puckered bullet scar on his shoulder and the one on his chest. She traced the raised line that ran down the center of his chest, her face wistful. Mulder felt her sadness, and he wished he hadn't been so brusque.

 

"I know they're just scars, but they're ugly. I don't like you seeing them," he admitted. "That's vain, but the truth. I still can't do a decent pushup. I have to watch my hand to tie my shoes or cut a steak. I went from being a professional baseball player to a guy who can't fasten his own cufflink."

 

She left her hand on his bare chest. "Do you think I care about pushups or cufflinks?"

 

"I care."

 

She smiled sadly. "I just call you Superman; you don't have to be."

 

"Is that supposed to make me feel better? Thank you for loving me unconditionally, but I'd like the conditions to be better."

 

"Would you rather be dead?"

 

He exhaled in annoyance. He knew she was the voice of reason, but reason didn't help him at that moment. "No, I wouldn't rather be dead."

 

A few seconds passed before she asked, "Do you remember asking me if I nursed Emily?" Mulder nodded. She continued, "When a woman has a baby, her body changes. Some women more than others, but you can't become a mother and have the body you had at nineteen. That's the cost of having a baby. I miss my nineteen-year-old body, but not nearly as much as I love having my daughter."

 

"I didn't have a baby, Dana. I got shot by a mugger."

 

"You did get shot." She took his hand, interlacing their fingers. "You don't remember, but that night, in the alley, you sent us away and you stayed behind. You wanted to make sure Will and Emily and I were safe. I heard the first shot and turned back. I saw that man point the gun directly at your chest and pull the trigger. I watched you die, Mulder. But I ordered you not to leave me, and I felt your heart beat again beneath my hands. In the hospital, I prayed to God to let you wake up and I felt your hand move. The moment I knew you could hear me- There was so much beauty in the world. Will still had a father, and Emily and I still had you. I still had you." She paused and said quietly, "You kept us safe, and you stayed with us, and those scars are what it cost you. So, thank you. You did a good job." She looked up at him. Her blue eyes seemed bottomless. "Does that make you feel better?"

 

Mulder kissed her forehead and leaned down to kiss her lips. "I think that would make anyone feel better."

 

"They're just scars, Mulder. I have mine, and you have yours," she promised him. "Like you said, there are scars that show, but also scars that don't show."

 

"I know," he answered softly.

 

She squeezed his hand. "Get dressed, Superman; you're now very late. Mrs. Franklin is downstairs, breakfast is on the table, and I'm leaving for school. You’re in charge of saving the world today. Please, please remember to speak to the new maid about the laundry. Dinner is at six."

 

"I'll see what I can do, Scully," Mulder promised.

 

She kissed him quickly and was gone, leaving him alone in the warm bathroom.

 

Mulder picked up his toothbrush. As he polished his pearly whites with his right hand, he touched each finger of his left hand to his left thumb, checking his dexterity. His doctors continued to marvel. “Such rapid healing,” and “Better than I ever would have predicted.” “Miraculous,” was the neurologist's last pronouncement, though Mulder suspected it wasn't a miracle so much as genetics and a little sleight of hand, so to speak.

 

His strength returned, but the dexterity in his left hand hadn’t. If Mulder watched his hand, though, he could make the fingers move - not with his nerves and muscles, but the same way he moved paperclips and fountain pens and jellybeans. And he kept getting better at it. He got better at hearing Dana's thoughts and feeling her sensations, and sensing other’s presence and emotions. Mulder didn't know how he did it or why, but his new ability seemed benign. So far.

 

"Daddy-O! We need to leave straight away!" Will called.

 

Mulder rinsed out his mouth and promised, "Five minutes, son. Go start the car."

 

The man in the mirror was less graceful, but all in all, an excellent recovery, especially considering where he started. The doctors said Mulder should be dead - or at least a mindless lump occupying a bed in some hospital back ward - and maybe he should be. Maybe this happened if a man looked too long into the abyss and the abyss began to look back. Or maybe Mulder became more of what he'd always been. Maybe Frohike was right: Mulder was, and always had been, different.

 

Dana didn't mind her Superman being banged up. Comforting to know. They both had their scars. Unconditional love still had conditions, though. Dana wanted to marry Clark Kent, not an ubermensch - Nietzsche's Superman, a eugenic ideal above human frailty and morality.

 

Mulder wanted to be normal.

 

He wanted to be one of the good guys.

 

He wanted to be the man Dana thought he was.

 

"Dad, bloody hell! What's keeping you?" his son yelled angrily, from downstairs.

 

Mulder reached for the safety razor. It skittered obligingly a few inches across the counter, toward his fingertips. “Stop it,” he told the razor sternly.

 

*~*~*~* 

 

Mulder returned from the FBI offices with his pride smarting and his blood pressure still up. As he parked, a patrol car drove past slowly. Mulder nodded tersely, and the police officer nodded back.

 

In the house, Mulder dropped his suit coat over the banister and set his hat, wallet, and keys on the fish tank. A school of mollies abandoned their ceramic reef to gape at him like bug-eyed aliens. Four baskets overflowing with dirty clothes and linens sat in the foyer, and Will’s school shirts and trousers lay scattered around the otherwise spotless living room as if Dana, in a huff, had thrown them over the railing upstairs. Mulder dimly remembered her telling him to speak to the new German maid, who either thought laundry was Mrs. Franklin’s job or they sent it out. For two weeks, the maid had gathered everything needing washed – but didn’t wash it.

 

Mulder rolled his shoulder and exhaled. He wondered what could possibly make his day any worse. Maybe coming home to an overflowing toilet. Getting hemorrhoids. A speeding ticket. A case of V.D.

 

No. Any of those would be an improvement.

 

A bloody hand towel crowned one of the baskets. More nosebleeds. From the smell of the laundry, Emily was throwing up again, too.

 

"If you need money, I can help, Dana," Margaret Scully's voice said from the kitchen, startling Mulder. "Your father left some," her voice continued, "I could borrow-"

 

"It's not money,” Dana’s voice interrupted. "It's not about money at all."

 

Her mother asked, "But who pays for all this: Emily’s nurse, the doctor bills, your tuition? You're not working. He pays for it, doesn't he? You live here and he pays for everything. That's the deal."  

 

As Mulder stood outside the kitchen door, his conscience nagged briefly about eavesdropping but got overruled when Dana didn't answer her mother. In his mind, Dana should say they had no “deal.” Mulder and Dana loved each other and they were getting married; they'd merely gotten ahead of themselves in the sleeping arrangements. Technically, Dana had an apartment across the alley, though she and Emily hadn’t spent a night there since before Thanksgiving.

 

"Don't do this to yourself. What will you do when you get in trouble again?" Mrs. Scully demanded.

 

"That's not going to happen," Dana answered tensely. Mulder heard a knife against the cutting board and water beginning to boil.

 

"Do you think I’m deaf, dumb, and blind, Dana? He-"

 

"He is named ‘Mulder,’ Mom. Fox Mulder. You've never given him a chance."

 

"I gave him a chance and ended up watching my baby girl nearly die from a botched abortion. Don't tell me again he had nothing to do with it. Don't you dare tell me it wasn't his baby. Why didn't he marry you then? You're pretty, you're smart, you're a good cook and mother and housekeeper," Mrs. Scully pleaded. "You're barely twenty-eight years old. You could have any man you want. You-"

 

"I want Mulder," Dana interrupted.

 

"I know, Dana. That's normal. I remember being young. Have you thought about what he wants, besides a good time?"

 

A heavy pan came down on the stove, and Dana's voice said angrily, "I didn't invite you over to lecture me, Mom." A pause and, "A good time? You should see the women who come up to Mulder: nineteen-year-old girls so perfect they don't even look real. He doesn't encourage them; they offer - a no-strings-attached 'good time,' as you put it. All Mulder wants is get away from them. And honestly, Mom, if all he wanted when we met was to seduce me and walk away, he could have. I... I don't question he loves me, and I wish you wouldn't either."

 

The mollies in the fish tank watched Mulder accusingly. He started to clear his throat to let Dana know he was home, but Margaret Scully spoke.

 

"I don't question the love,” her mother said. “Only the wisdom of what you're doing. Yes, he cares about you. He cares about Emily, too; I've seen him with her. Yes, he's exciting and wealthy and handsome, and it's normal to be star struck, but think about the future. Your future. Your daughter's future. You want him and I'm sure he wants you too, but what happens when the want fades? It's just an engagement ring, Dana. The same ring I saw on your finger before - when the doctor told me you might not live and the police waited to arrest you if you did. Where was he then? What happens when playing house isn't fun for him anymore?"

 

"Mom, did you hear what I said?” Dana responded angrily. “What about my life do you think is fun for him? That you and Bill hate him? He got shot trying to protect us? My sick daughter? Do you think all the appointments and transfusions are fun? Do you have any idea how much money those cost? Maybe he liked it when I worked all the time and he'd take me out on a date and I'd fall asleep? And now? Mulder tolerates me going to medical school because I want to go, but do you think he wants his wife to be a doctor? He's old-fashioned - even more than you'd think. He won't tell me 'no,' but if it was up to Mulder, I'd be at home taking care of our children."

 

"He's not your husband, Dana," her mother reminded her. "That handsome, hooligan son of his isn't yours, and he said he's not Emily's father. Don't pretty it up and pretend. He can walk away at any time. And he will. I've seen pictures of him in the paper with other women. The papers say-"

 

"They're old pictures, Mom. It's a Hollywood set-up. He escorted some starlet to a social event, the picture of them ended up in the paper, and it was good publicity for both of them. Stop reading those tabloids. All they print is lies."

 

"He's divorced," was Mrs. Scully's next objection.

 

"And half-Jewish and mechanically inept and color-blind," Dana listed for her. “With no sense of direction. He’s also fluent in six languages, and has a degree from Oxford, a genius IQ, a purple heart, and his picture in the Baseball Hall of Fame.”

 

"He drinks."

 

"Not anymore," Dana insisted. "He can stay sober or he can leave."

 

"It's not your beautiful old house to make him leave, honey. What if you get in trouble again?"

 

"If I was expecting, Mulder would be delighted," Dana said bluntly.

 

After a stunned pause, Mrs. Scully said skeptically, "You think so?"

 

"He would be. But it's not going to happen. The doctor said so. After- After- It won’t happen."

 

After an even longer silence, her mother warned, "You are playing with fire, honey."

 

"You think I don't know?" Dana said. Something thwapped down hard on the counter. The knife started chopping again. "Is this when you tell me to marry a nice, steady Irish-Catholic boy with great prospects? He died, Mom. Besides, I'd suffocate now. You and Dad raised me to believe I could do anything. That's why I went to college, why I joined the Army Nurse Corp, why I kept Emily. For so long it was me and my daughter, and we made it. We survived. I do love Mulder, Mom. The kind of love that brings sailors home from the sea. I love him so much it scares me, sometimes. But there are things- Things you don't know."

 

Eventually, Mrs. Scully said softly, "I'm sure there are. I don't make your decisions, Dana, but if there's anything I can do to help, I will. Anytime you need a place to go, please call me. I'm not going to judge you and I'm not going to ask you any questions. Don't do anything hasty again."

 

Not able to take any more, Mulder went back and closed the front door loudly, announcing his presence. He put on his party face and pushed open the kitchen door.

 

"Hi, honey. Hello, Mrs. Scully. Good to see you again."

 

"Mr. Mulder," Margaret Scully said coolly. She picked up a butcher knife and looked around like she wanted to chop something.  

 

"I ran into Mom at the grocery store and asked her to have dinner with us. She hadn't seen Emily in a while," Dana said. She smiled, but her eyes didn't.   

 

Mulder suspected he wore the same expression. He needed to talk to Dana alone, and he didn’t welcome waiting or having her mother glare at him all evening in his own house.

 

"Sure; that would be fine," he answered before he realized no one asked him. He pursed his lips and caught his bottom lip between his teeth.

 

Dana turned toward the counter again and resumed her assault on the carrots. “Mulder, the laundry. You were supposed to-”

 

He shoved his hands in his trouser pockets. “I know. I’m sorry. I’ll have the cleaners pick it up in the morning.”

 

“No, I’ll do it.” The knife thwack-thwack-thwacked against the butcher block. “Tonight, I guess, unless you want everyone wearing party dresses and tuxedos – without underclothes - in the morning.”

 

Margaret Scully watched Mulder with a steady, disapproving glare.

 

“No, you won’t,” he insisted. “I’ll carry it to the basement. Sort out what needs washed tonight and tell me what to do.”

 

Dana continued chopping. “Are you going to starch and iron the laundry, too?”

 

Mulder didn’t know where they kept the iron. If he even owned an iron. The last washer he’d used had a wringer on top. He’d bought Dana the nicest automatic washer and dryer the store sold, but he had no idea how to operate either machine. Also, he didn’t give a damn about laundry at the moment. He heard anger in his voice as he asked, “Do you want me to call the maid to come back tonight? Find her number, and I’ll call.”

 

The knife stopped. Dana’s shoulder’s rose and Mulder’s cheekbones broadened.

 

Mrs. Scully offered neutrally, “Dana, do you want me to help?”

 

Dana and Mulder answered in unison. “No.”

 

Mrs. Scully’s jaw widened.

 

In a terse, even tone, he asked, “What do you want me to do, Dana?”

 

Her back rose and fell. After several seconds of awkward silence, she asked calmly, "Would you go upstairs and see if Sleeping Beauty is awake?"

 

Glad to escape Margaret Scully's glare, Mulder trotted upstairs to Fairyland. In keeping with the story, when Mulder kissed her forehead, Emily opened her eyes and raised her arms to be picked up. She smelled like clean sheets and clean pajamas and alcohol swabs. He buried his face in her neck for a moment and blew a big raspberry to make her squirm.   

 

The blood transfusions hadn't slowed Emily’s anemia as much as they’d hoped, so the doctors added injections of a cortisone cocktail: a new, experimental drug. Dana hadn't liked the idea and was proved correct when the shots made Emily sick - so sick they’d talked about removing Em from the hospital's study. Miraculously, Emily got better, and they got to take her home. Emily stayed pale and lethargic, but her body didn’t attack itself anymore, viewing its own cells as the enemy. The nosebleeds came less and less frequently. As long as the injections continued, Emily held on to some fragile, hospital-white version of a normal childhood. Without them, according to the doctors, she had a matter of months.

 

Mulder carried her downstairs. In the foyer, one of the baskets of dirty laundry was missing. Will’s school uniforms had vanished from the living room floor. The washing machine churned in the basement. In the interest of averting World War III, Mulder decided against offering assistance or further objection.

 

"Dana was telling me about her Christmas gift," Mrs. Scully said as Mulder returned to the kitchen. "I understand it's an engagement ring?"

 

"It's a Christmas tradition," Dana said. Her mood seemed to have improved. Perhaps due to the dent in the mountain of dirty laundry or at the sight of her sleepy daughter. Regardless, Mulder got a tired smile. "He gets me the same thing every year."

 

"I'm not very creative," he said.

 

He had the ring resized before the first time he proposed, and after a few false starts, Dana was wearing it when she vanished. Once she mysteriously reappeared three months later, she'd returned the ring within days of returning to New York. No explanation accompanied the envelope left at The Plaza Hotel's front desk with 'Mr. Fox W. Mulder' written in Dana’s neat script. Recognizing the writing and desperate for contact with her, he ripped it open and found the ring inside. Dana could have sold it and put herself halfway through medical school or thrown it in the gutter, but she hadn't. As the one who called off the engagement, she’d politely returned it. Mulder swore the ring still felt warm from being on her hand all those months. That day, he started drinking again. Living in a hotel with two bars made sin convenient.

 

Mrs. Scully moved to take her granddaughter, but Em seemed happy against Mulder’s shoulder. Mrs. Scully stepped back. Her lips tightened into a polite line. "Is there a wedding band that matches it?" she asked, dropping a broad-as-the-side-of-a-barn hint. "Or is there just an engagement ring?"

 

"I know my grandmother had a wedding ring." Mulder shifted Emily. "But I couldn't find it. She wore a plain gold band, and there were thousands of those. My grandfather probably had the band engraved, but I didn't know with what, and I don't read Hebrew. I found her engagement ring. It's distinctive, and I-I thought my mother might want it."

 

Margaret Scully looked puzzled.

 

Mulder swallowed and broke eye contact. He set Emily on the kitchen counter. "My grandfather died before World War II, but my maternal grandmother lived in Germany when Hitler came to power. My company took one of the concentration camps, and she was there."

 

"Your grandmother was wearing the ring when you found her?" Mrs. Scully asked with a little furrow between her brows.

 

“No. No, the Nazis took anything of value off the, off the-the prisoners. Jewelry, eyeglasses, canes, false teeth, even. It was all there, sorted. I kept looking until I found it. No one stopped me, and I thought my mother might want it," Mulder repeated stupidly.

 

The kitchen dimmed and for a moment, he stepped out of reality and into a surreal world of Nazi horror. In slow motion, Mulder looked around the death camp, trying to comprehend how one human could categorize, utilize, and dispose of another human as thoughtlessly as one experimented on a lab rat.

 

Mulder smelled the rotting bodies. Heard his men being sick. He felt the chill of death around him. He felt Evil, and he felt part of that Evil.

 

They opened the boxcars. The guard dogs started barking inside their chain-link pens. Mulder felt his tags digging into his neck, his pack on his back, and his own worthless wedding band on his finger. He was thirty-years-old with a son he barely knew and a wife he'd been unfaithful to, but he believed it all correctable, as though he'd become his own father through a Jungian clerical error.

 

He raised his rifle, aiming at the unarmed Nazi guards a few yards away. His finger trembled against the trigger. His mouth watered and his nostrils flared like a predator with prey. He wanted to kill them. He craved it. He differed from other men. Mulder was bred to kill the way hounds were bred to hunt or racehorses bred to run. His finger twitched, his rifle fired, and the German soldiers dropped to the ground. Blood spread from beneath their bodies in a smooth red tide. The guard dogs continued barking. Then the dogs yelped and stopped.

 

Mulder heard the Army bulldozer rumbling in the distance, coming to bury the mess.

 

"Oh," Mrs. Scully's voice said softly.

 

Mulder blinked. The death camp vanished and his Georgetown kitchen reappeared, smelling of cinnamon and soap bubbles and raw carrots. The sound of bullets striking became Emily's heels drumming against the cabinet. The growl of the bulldozer merged with the washing machine in the basement.

 

"You found her ring for her? For your grandmother?" Mrs. Scully asked, sounding far away.

 

Mulder tried to answer as the walls closed in. He saw Emily’s feet bouncing on the cabinet. He knew Dana or her mother had started the washer; no bulldozer approached. He didn’t hold a rifle, and the pantry didn’t overflow with dead, pregnant Jewish women. Mulder recognized reality, but he didn’t trust it.

 

"Mom, no. No, she was dead. All the women were dead. His grandmother, his aunt. He found their bodies," Dana interceded. "Mulder, are you all right?"

 

He shook his head, trying to clear it, but made some excuse and bolted for the kitchen door.

 

His heart pounded. He tried to breathe, but the smell of blood and vomit filled the foyer. The bulldozer rumbled louder toward the sea of death. Within hours, this atrocity would be buried. The Army would make it disappear, and no one would care what happened in the camp, or why. A decade later, the dead women still called Mulder’s name, pleading for help. Dana’s voice. Sam’s voice. They begged him to protect them, to save them.

 

The death camp had a laboratory filled with broken glass and burned files. It had a medical clinic with obstetrical or gynecological equipment. A little building had served as a brothel. A gas chamber and an incinerator. The Nazi guards. The guard dogs. And trains from German-occupied countries had brought boxcars of Untermenschen. Subhuman females. But no nursery. No diapers or baby blankets or cribs. However the Nazis impregnated all those women, live babies weren’t the goal.

 

Mulder didn’t know what had happened to the women, let alone how he was supposed to save them.

 

He jerked open the heavy front door.

 

Mulder paced the front porch, trying not to hyperventilate, as Dana caught up with him. "Deep breaths, Mulder," she reminded him, keeping her distance. He circled, needing to prowl, to patrol, to find the threat. "Easy. It wasn't real."

 

She was wrong. The threat remained out there; he knew it. Unformed, unnoticed, but omnipresent, waiting, and watching. He sensed it. Mulder had felt it before and he felt it now.        

 

The neighbors' faces began to appear between lace curtains by the time he paced out and stood in front of Dana with his hands on his hips. "Damn it! That hasn't h-ha-happened in months! Your family thinks I'm pond sludge. Now your mother thinks I'm crazy pond sludge."  

 

"Mom had two sons and a husband in the Pacific. Only Bill came home alive. She thinks you saw Hell and still have some shell shock. My mother and big brother still think you're regular old pond sludge. My sister Missy likes you, but she's never met you."

 

During another uncomfortable pause, someone was supposed to laugh and no one did.

 

"I'm sorry," he muttered. Dana took his hand. He followed as she led him to the long swing on the front porch. He sat down heavily beside her, resting his elbows on his knees and hanging his head. 

 

"Is he okay?" Mrs. Scully asked from the doorway, a moment later. "Mr. Mulder?"

 

"I'm sorry," Mulder repeated, not looking up. He felt Dana's hand rubbing his back and her mother's eyes staring a hole in the top of his head.

 

"I didn't mean to upset you. I didn't know. I’m sorry that happened to- to your family.” Mrs. Scully’s voice sounded kind, if awkward. “Dana, Emily wants to know if she can come-" Emily was past her and on Mulder's lap. "Out," Mrs. Scully finished.

 

"A bad awake dream?" Emily asked, sounding worried.

 

The swing tilted as Dana stood. 

 

"Bad awake dream." Mulder pressed his hot, damp cheek against Emily's and held her close. "Better now."

 

"The glass is cracked," Dana said. She traced a pane of glass in the ornate door. "I don't remember it being like that."

 

Mulder looked up. It wasn't cracked earlier, and he hadn't slammed the door on the way out. "I must have done it. I'm sorry."

 

Her mother still stood staring at him.

 

"It's easy to have replaced," Dana assured him. "Here, too," she said, looking at the tall glass sidelights flanking the front door. "Oh, both of them."

 

Mulder held Emily and didn’t meet anyone's eyes.

 

"I'm going to put some masking tape on the cracks for tonight," Dana decided. "It feels like-" She looked out at the still, cloudless April dusk, perplexed. "I thought I felt a storm coming."

 

"I thought so, too," her mother agreed.

 

Mulder got to his feet and handed Emily off to Mrs. Scully. "I'm going to call someone. I want it fixed tonight."

 

Dana looked at him, seeming uncertain. It would cost a fortune to get the handyman to come after-hours. "It's okay, Mulder," she said, and he knew she was right. Having a few panes of glass in place wouldn't keep out anyone who wanted in. That was illogical. However, so was the loaded revolver now hidden on top of the tall wardrobe in their bedroom.

 

"I want it fixed tonight," Mulder repeated. As her mother disappeared into the house, he told Dana seriously, "I was at the FBI today. And someone was here, in the house. We need to talk later."

 

"Okay," she agreed, pacifying him distractedly. She looked at the sky again before she returned inside.

 

Crazy pond sludge, he thought. Crazy, unnatural pond sludge.

 

"Mulder, I think your fish tank is leaking," Dana called from the foyer.

 

"Shit," he muttered.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Dana studied anatomy in bed. Since her studying didn’t involve Mulder this time, that wasn't as interesting as it sounded. Everything and nothing about Dana's life involved him today.

 

Mulder opened his eyes to see Dana reading page 163 in her textbook. She was reading page 151 earlier, when Mulder gave up on getting her attention and dozed off. Dana was angry with him about the handyman as well as the laundry, and he suspected her mother’s lecture had some impact. Between the three, by bedtime, Mulder might as well have been invisible.

 

The clock read 11:37, and a nest of notebook paper and textbooks covered their bed. Dana had her hair twisted into a loose knot on top of her head, and a pen was stuck behind one ear. Mulder’s clothes must have been first through the washing machine and dryer earlier; Dana wore a clean white T-shirt which made her look like one of Will's bobbysoxer girlfriends. Those smooth white legs sticking out from beneath Mulder’s undershirt in combination with Dana’s secret: a pair of black-rimmed reading glasses – Mulder’s latent geek was aroused.

 

He started to roll over but felt something weighing down his backside.

 

"Wait; my tea is on you," Dana said, reaching for the cup and saucer.

 

"I make a good table." Mulder shifted his legs and sent a notebook to the floor. "I make a good chair, too. Scully, want to put away the book and come sit-"

 

She raised an annoyed eyebrow at him. He sighed, and his latent geek twitched with disappointment.

 

He stroked her thigh. In addition to his T-shirt, she wore a pair of his boxer shorts. "Are you going to study all night?"

 

"I'm trying to catch up on what I missed while we were in New York with Em. I'll go to sleep in a little bit."

 

"What about right before you go to sleep?"

 

"You're insatiable."

 

"I’m trying to get my underclothes back.” He paused but admitted, “Also, I like the glasses."

 

"We'll see," she conceded.

 

He folded his right arm under his head and watched her reading. Dana paused to underline or star the page occasionally. Again, Mulder might as well have worn an invisibility ring.

 

"A friend of yours was here today, looking for you," he said. Mulder got disinterestedly 'um-hummed' as Dana perused the limbic system. "Will and I got halfway to the airport when William announced he forgot his backpack - the one with all his incomplete homework in it. We had to turn around and come back. William found a man going through my desk. Mrs. Franklin said the man went to school with you and needed some notes you promised him. She was trying to get Emily to eat breakfast, so she let him in and told him to start hunting. I guess he didn't find your notes, because he left as Will came in. He told Will he'd try to find you on campus."

 

"Tom McCafferty," Dana sounded frustrated at his continued interruptions. "Stocky blond fellow? Charming in an overbearing way? Blind to an engagement ring on my finger?"

 

"'Alex," Mulder answered evenly. "Tall, dark hair, dark eyes. Handsome. Needs a haircut. The man I saw hastily leaving our house this morning looked nothing like a medical student and a lot like a young, pretty version of yours truly."

 

"I don't go to school with anyone named Alex."

 

Mulder waited to see if she would say anything else. She didn’t, so he continued, "Will thought he - this Alex - was the man who shot me. That’s what I wanted to tell you earlier."

 

Dana’s head moved as though she'd been slapped hard but didn't want anyone to know how badly it hurt. She looked up from the textbook. "Was he?"

 

"Dana, I don't remember. Will seemed sure, though. Your spare set of keys is missing from my desk. I-I think Alex took them."  

 

Without marking her place, she slammed the anatomy textbook and turned toward him. "Oh my God. He was here?”

 

“He was here, Dana. He was in our house.”

 

“Did you call the police?"

 

"I did. It didn't seem high on their list of priorities, so I called Agent Dales at the FBI. His supervisor refused to let me speak to him. I asked for Assistant Director Skinner and had the Deputy Director explain the Bureau wouldn't be granting me access to any more files. I thought they just dragged their feet, but apparently my saying they keep convicting innocent men pissed Hoover off. You know what a diplomat I am. I'm not to contact Agent Dales or the Assistant Director, and I got the feeling Dales and Mr. Skinner got in trouble for letting me see those cases in the first place. I took the files back this afternoon; the Deputy Director wanted them immediately. He suggested I find another topic for my dissertation before someone questioned my loyalty to the American government."

 

"All this happened while I was at school today?"

 

"Also, Will missed his flight. I had to call Phoebe, who yelled at me for interrupting her birthday party preparations. Apparently, I bloody cock up everything, and the judge will be informed. And Will- It was noon before I convinced him to calm down and get on a plane. Then – and I can’t imagine why - I forgot to tell the maid about the laundry. I drove to the FBI to get called a communist. I came home to your mother, who I hallucinated in front of. I paid a handyman double-over-time to fix the glass, made you mad, and my fish are living in a bucket in the kitchen sink. It's been a bad day, honey."

 

"It sounds like it," Dana said, as if supplying a line.

 

Mulder thought she started to add something else, but she didn't.

 

After a tense silence, he told her, "The police promised to keep an eye on the house. I had a locksmith come, so the keys this man got won't work anymore."

 

As if it was of utmost concern, she asked, "What about the FBI?"

 

“My dissertation? It was a whim. I'm surprised they considered it."

 

"It wasn't a whim. It’s important work, and it's important to you."

 

"So is my family." Mulder picked at the hem of his/her T-shirt and twisted the fabric around his index finger. "Do you know him? Alex? Not from medical school, but do you know him at all?"

 

"Of course, I don't. If I did, I would have told the police."

    

"Emily's father being 'Alex Krycek' on her real birth certificate and this man being 'Alex' - it's a coincidence he tried to kill me?"

 

"How do you know that?" Dana asked in five carefully measured words.

 

"I went through your things after you disappeared, trying to figure out what happened to you. I had Frohike try to track down the name, but he got nowhere; he said you or the hospital made it up. So it's a coincidence?"

 

"Yes," she said slowly, sounding heart-breakingly uncertain. "No. No, I don't know him. The hospital put the name on there. Yes, it's a coincidence."

 

"Emily looks like him," Mulder said as neutrally as he could manage.

 

She didn't answer. He saw her thoughts, though: the recollected face of a dark-haired man holding a gun in an overcast alleyway. Grinning at her the same way guards grinned at pretty female prisoners. Dana remembered same the man Mulder saw hurrying down their front steps this morning. The same man, ages ago, Emily had described to the police sketch artist.

 

"Dana-” He tried to get the dark rage inside him to simmer down. “Scully, whoever Alex Krycek is and whatever he did to you... I’m marrying you. I’m adopting Emily. That makes me your husband and Emily’s father. He isn’t either of those things. Whatever Alex Krycek did-” He worried his lips, and heart pounding, told her, “I don’t care if he is her father; if he comes near you or Emily or Will or me again, I'll kill him.”

 

She looked at him with wide blue eyes. Her lips parted. A static intensity filled the room. The hair on Mulder’s arms rose. He waited for Dana to be the voice of reason. To tell him to calm down, stop taking nonsense. That he wouldn’t kill anyone. She’d be wrong, but Mulder still expected her to say it.

 

“Not call the police. Not beat him senseless,” he said despite ordering his mouth to stop moving. “I’ll kill that man, Scully, and I won’t think twice. If that's not what you want, speak now."

 

Mulder anticipated it, craved it: the warm weapon in his hand, the bitter scent of gunpowder. To watch Alex Krycek’s body recoil, go limp. Face pale, pupils dilate as life bled away. Mulder’s latent geek twitched at the thought, confusing the power of taking a life with the power of creating one.

 

“Don’t go after him, but-” The alarm clock on the nightstand ticked four times before Dana said evenly, "If he comes near us again, that's what I want."

 

"Okay," he promised.

 

Dana shivered and abruptly looked away. She pushed her glasses higher on her nose and opened her anatomy textbook. She flipped to page 163, and almost ripped out pages 1 through 162 for being in the way.

 

Mulder’s heart slowed, but his vow stayed on his tongue like a square of the bitter chocolate Dana kept in the pantry - the kind for baking, not snacking. This wasn't supposed to be them. When Mr. Baseball falls for Miss All-American-Brains-and-Beauty, the theme music should swell and the credits roll toward fade-to-black and happily-ever-after. They had their beautiful brick house with a grocery list on the icebox, a note for the milkman in the window, and miniature roses in the window boxes. They had two television sets so Mulder never missed “Alfred Hitchcock” if Emily and Will were glued to “American Bandstand.” Mulder had a can of Burma-Shave rusting on the sink beside the cavity-fighting protection of Crest. In the midst of their American dream, they coolly discussed murder.

 

Dana focused on the limbic system far too intently to truly be studying.

 

"I had a dog," Mulder said, after watching her turn several unread pages. "After Samantha vanished, a neighbor gave me a puppy, trying to cheer me up. I was thirteen, almost fourteen. I had the puppy about a month before it got in a fight with a raccoon and got chewed up. The vet came, took one look at the sick raccoon weaving around our backyard, and told me to send for my father. I guess the vet didn't want to tell me, and my mother hadn’t left her bedroom in days."

 

Dana put down her textbook and returned the pen to above her ear. "The puppy contracted rabies."

 

Mulder nodded with his head cradled on the crook of his arm. "My father came home. He told me to wait inside the house. The house has windows, of course. I saw Vater take a breath, raise his pistol, and pull the trigger. He got a shovel and started digging a grave beside the carriage house, still wearing his hat and suit coat from the office. I went outside, and I saw he was crying. He didn't cry over my sister, but he sobbed over killing my puppy. He kept telling me he was sorry. That he’d get me another puppy. I told him I'd bury the dog. I wasn’t crying. In fact, I don’t remember feeling anything except sad for Vater.”

 

A sympathetic pain gathered in Dana’s chest; Mulder felt it.

 

“For the record: he never got me another puppy.” After swallowing, he continued, “Vater patted my shoulder, told me he was sorry, got in his Cadillac, and went back to work. That was the only time I ever saw him cry. In fact, it was the last time in my life he touched me. After that, he never shook my hand, he never hugged me, he never hit me; he started looking through me. Vater never said he was sorry I lost my sister, or my family fell apart, or I had to stop being a child at thirteen years-old. But euthanizing my puppy: for that he apologized. I didn’t understand then, but I do now. After he drank himself to death and took whatever he knew about Samantha to his grave."

 

After three more ticks from the nightstand and a pause seeming eternal to Mulder, Dana asked, “What do you understand?”

 

“Necessary evil,” he said. “Do they teach you about that in doctor school, Scully? The mercurial peculiarities of the male conscience?”

 

“Under extreme circumstances, anyone is capable-”

 

“In Germany,” he interrupted, “After I saw the dead women in the boxcars - I've never been sorry I shoot the Nazi guards. Turns out, the men I murdered were foot soldiers and the true monsters were long gone. Even knowing that, I can't work up any remorse. I have nightmares about shooting the guard dogs, though. Dreams of Nazis trying to take Will, and hurting my aunt and cousin and grandmother, but me killing men who hurt my family- Killing them in cold blood-” Mulder shook his head. “Not a twinge of guilt. I only regret the dogs. I don't like the kind of man that makes me, but it's the truth. Probably, my father didn't like the kind of man he was, either.”

 

“You’re not your father, Mulder. You’re a good man.”

 

“We’re all good men, Dana,” he informed her. “My father was a good man. He was a brilliant patriot in a Savile Row suit who did what he thought was necessary to further some greater good. I’m a divorced, out-of-work, ex-baseball player who the military pinned medals on for cold blooded murder. We’re all good men. Like you’re a nice girl with a million secrets who just plotted murder with me.”

 

Dana didn’t respond – not even with some completely rational argument laced heavily with big medical words. Within seconds, her textbook required her full attention again.

 

His latent geek would remain unsatisfied tonight, it seemed.

 

Mulder tried to hear her thoughts, but her mind seemed fogged in. He exhaled and rolled to his back. “You wanted to see my scars, honey. I told you they were ugly.”

 

She didn’t respond.

 

Mulder stared at the ceiling. “Maybe you should consider marrying a nice, steady Irish-Catholic boy with great prospects,” he suggested, again falsely casual. “Instead of a half-Jewish, mechanically inept, color-blind alcoholic killer with no sense of direction. Who J. Edger Hoover just called a communist.”

 

Dana’s textbook pages didn’t rustle. She remained beside him, with her back against the bed pillows and her legs bent at an angle to support the thick anatomy text. “You were eavesdropping on Mom and me this evening.”

 

“I was feeding the fish and happened to overhear.” He turned his head to look up at her. “The kind of love that scares you? I scare you?”

 

She put her hand on his upper arm, stroking. Her fingertips felt cool. “Sometimes.”

 

“I don’t want you to be scared. Not of me, not of anything.”

 

“I don’t want you to have to kill anyone, Mulder.”

 

“I don’t mind,” he assured her, the way he’d answer if she asked him to start a pot of water boiling for dinner or get Emily into her pajamas for bed. Not his usual jobs, but not unheard of in 1955, either. He closed his eyes. “I don’t mind at all. I know what’s worth killing for, worth dying for.” He added tiredly, “But Vater never did.”

 

He heard a soft sound as something hit the rug, and the louder thump of a book. Mulder opened his eyes to see notebooks cascading over the edge of the bed like lemmings as Dana shifted.

 

“Are you done studying?” he asked hopefully.

 

“I don’t want a nice boy,” Dana informed him. “I want you, Mulder.”

 

“You’re using ‘want’ in the carnal sense at the moment, I suspect.”

 

She pulled the band out of her ponytail so her hair fell loose around her face. “Oxford University and New York’s Most Eligible Bachelor, and you still have to ask?”

 

“‘Eligible Bachelor’ was a synonym for ‘lonely, divorced chump with an apartment on Central Park South.’”

 

She flung back the percale sheet and straddled his hips with smooth, white thighs. She ordered huskily, “Take off that T-shirt, mister.”

 

Mulder gathered up the cotton edge and shucked his T-shirt over his head in one motion. He fell back against the pillow. She put her hands over his as if holding him down. He still wore pajama bottoms, but he suspected he wouldn’t for long.

 

"Leave on your glasses," he requested.

 

The spring night air crackled again, and he felt a surge of primal emotion from her. It wasn’t the way nice Irish-Catholic girls and well-bred Jewish boys loved each other. It was how soldiers celebrated surviving a battle and lionesses protected their pride. The kind of love that brought sailors home from the sea and Mulder back from the brink of death.

 

A pair of boxer shorts and a second T-shirt joined his shirt on the bedroom rug. He was right about the pajama bottoms.

 

“Lie back,” she requested, wearing her glasses and a promising little smile. Mulder wore even less. “I’ll show you what they teach us about anatomy in doctor school.”

 

*~*~*~*

 

Dana had armed herself with a spade and plotted her herb garden like a military general planned an attack. Mulder and Emily helped by occupying the backyard hammock and staying out of the way. The robins had returned to Washington; a pair busily constructed a nest under the eave. The sun played down on Mulder’s face, dancing through the leaves. The hammock rocked gently back and forth like a boat on the waves. He smelled freshly turned earth and cut grass and the sharp scent of the herbs. Emily was warm and heavy and asleep against him.

 

Mulder closed his eyes. He felt the breeze on his face, and let his mind drift to another lovely spring day in the nation’s capital. 

 

April 19, 1948 had been the opening game of the Yankees’ forty-sixth and Mulder's seventh season. In 1948, Nathuram Godse assassinated Gandhi. Tennessee Williams won the Pulitzer for Drama for “A Streetcar Named Desire,” and the Palomar Observatory telescope was finished in California. World War II had been over for three years, and William and Phoebe had lived in New York for two. Mulder had put a stop to Phoebe dropping by his apartment and taking a horizontal trip down memory lane, but he lacked other female prospects. He struggled to explain a son and the lack of a wedding band to nice girls, even with his own baseball card. Plenty of pretty girls waited outside the stadium and wouldn’t care about his lack of a wedding band. Mulder didn't want those girls around Will, and so Mulder kept walking after the games.

 

Mulder batted .320, hit thirty-nine homeruns, and the Yankees paid him $70,000 plus bonuses to do it.

 

At nine-years-old, William was all knees and elbows; Mulder was thirty-three and at the top of his game. Since Mulder couldn’t take Saturdays off, he brought Will along to whatever city the Yankees played in. At first Mulder had Will's nanny come, but last year Will announced he didn't want Nanny Marie; he was fine on his own. So Will wore his baseball glove to the game, sat with the players' wives, watched each pop fly, and never caught a thing. After each game, Mulder brought the boy a ball. Years later, Mulder discovered Will saved every one. The bat boy would bring notes to the dugout with 'Daddy I need mony for a nuther hot bog please. Good luck. Hit a homer. Love William Mulder' in a little boy's handwriting. Mulder saved those notes, too.

 

The Yankees didn’t play the Washington Senators at Griffith Stadium until evening. Mulder and William finished Will's homework on the plane that morning, and so they had the day free to explore DC. They watched Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein at the movie theater and, after lunch, roamed the lawn near the Jefferson Memorial. 

 

Nannie Marie dressed Will in short pants, a white oxford shirt, a jacket and a vest early that morning; Will discarded the tie and jacket hours ago. Mulder noticed William getting taller in the last months, and his face had lost its cherubic look. William was interested in airplanes and wizards, but not yet girls. In private, he still ran around Mulder's apartment in his shorts, pretending to battle dragons with a mop handle as his sword. Mulder hadn't realized it, but 1948 was Will's last year of pure boyhood.

 

Mulder bought Will a soda from a cart, and they found a shade tree beside the Tidal Basin to sit beneath. They opened Will's book. That day, they read “The Hobbit,” and Bilbo had acquired the ring of invisibility.

 

"What would you do if you could be invisible?" Mulder asked, pausing at the bottom of the page.

 

Will considered, sipped his soda, and asked in a crisp British accent, "Could I still see?"

 

"I suppose so. Bilbo can still see."

 

"I'd sneak into the ladies' dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman," Will decided and before Mulder could object, added, "Nanny Marie says they have the best tea and biscuits in the city there."

 

Mulder asked in surprise, "They do?"

 

"Don't they? I'm not allowed in the ladies' dressing room."

 

"I don't know, Will. They don't let me in the ladies' dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, either."

 

"We need a lady. They let ladies in, and a lady could sneak cookies out. Like a spy," his son advised him. William took another drink of soda. "A lady or a ring. You have a gold ring." 

 

"The one in the box on my dresser? That's my old wedding ring, from when your mother and I were married."

 

"It won't make you invisible?"

 

"That's debatable," Mulder answered. "No, not the way you're wanting it to."

 

"Well, do you know of a lady?"

 

"One who would sneak cookies out of the dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman for us? No, I can't say I do." Mulder thought a moment. He set the novel down and asked seriously, "Will, would you like for there to be a nice lady? A stepmother for you?"

 

"If she was sneaky." Will reminded Mulder earnestly, "They have the best biscuits in the city, Dad, and they're giving them to girls."

 

"All right. I'll keep my eyes peeled for a nice, sneaky, well-dressed lady with cookie crumbs around her mouth."

 

"Or a ring to make me invisible," Will suggested. "I could sneak biscuits out to you and we could share."

 

"I'll see what I can do." Mulder smiled and picked up the book again, but Will's attention had drifted. 

 

A toy boat sailed along the edge of the basin. Mulder and William put aside the book and went to watch it. Neither of them had seen anything like it, and the man operating it said he built it himself. The man worked with radio-controlled missiles during the war and combined the technology with his love of model sailboats. He recognized Mulder, and so offered to let Will work the controls.

 

Mulder felt eyes on them. He turned to see a pretty young woman watching from a nearby bench. She had a textbook open on her lap. She wore a trim skirt and sweater and, with her hair in a high pony tail, looked the part of a university student studying for her exams. He smiled at her, she smiled back politely, and Mulder returned his attention to Will - who sailed the priceless toy boat at top speed and directly toward a cement wall.

 

Mulder glanced back again. She studied her textbook.

 

The boat's owner patiently explained the radio controls to Will. William nodded and listened. Even then, he'd been good with mechanical things.

 

Mulder glanced back a third time and saw the girl watching them again. She wasn't Mulder’s type, but he liked something about her. He felt a spark, an odd recognition. Mulder thought of approaching her but didn't. He had a hard time thinking of something witty to say to women, and she didn't look like the type to be impressed by his baseball card. Frankly, she seemed more impressed by the boat.

 

Mulder kept an eye on her. Sometimes - and it made him an awful father - but sometimes nice women came up and, rather than talking to Mulder, talked to Will, who could turn on the charm effortlessly. Then Mulder talked with them about his charming son, which was easy.

 

Will got the hang of the radio controls and the sail. The breeze picked up. The sailboat cut gracefully through the glistening water, going exactly as Will wanted it. A small crowd gathered to watch.

 

"Nice, son," Mulder told him. William looked up him, grinning proudly.

 

"He had a steady hand, Mr. Mulder," the boat's owner agreed. "A talent."

 

William beamed.

 

Mulder noticed a nice-looking man in a captain's dress uniform walking quickly around the basin, his shoes polished to a high shine. Seeing him, the young woman smiled, gathered her books, and stood.

 

"Sorry, Dana," Mulder heard the man apologize, and saw him kiss her cheek. "Have you been waiting long?"

 

As he took her books, she answered, "Not long. You look very official, Doctor Murphy."

 

The man turned side to side, showing off his uniform. "If I gotta go, at least I'll go on style," he responded, and offered, "Let's go paint the town red tonight, though."

 

Shipping out, Mulder surmised. One of the doctors drafted to serve in Korea. Hoping to leave tomorrow with a smile on his face. Mulder studied the young woman, taking her measure. He decided unless Dr. Murphy had an engagement ring in his pocket, he better be content with a long, passionate goodbye kiss.

 

"Did you see the toy boat, John?" she asked. "It's radio-controlled. I've never seen one before."

 

The man said he saw it, though seeming disinterested. He took her hand, and Mulder watched, regretfully, as they walked away.

 

So much for that, Mulder told himself. He should have leveraged his batting average with the boat's owner and let her operate it. Invited her to the game so William would have someone to sit with besides Yogi Berra's girlfriend. Mulder had a captain's dress uniform, too. From a real war. He had a scar, and his uniform had real medals on it.

 

Mulder imagined himself chasing after her and insisting he and his son needed her help in a vital, covert operation in New York. “Bergdorf Goodman's, next Saturday morning,” he'd tell her in a low voice, without stuttering. “Only you can help us.” He'd be part Cary Grant, part Humphrey Bogart. All charm and confidence. She would, of course, agree.

 

Mulder was thirty-three, with a nine-year-old son, an ex-wife, and a job with his name on his shirt. To that nice college girl, Mulder might as well be invisible.

 

After the young couple walked out of sight, Mulder put his hand on Will's head. Mulder reminded him, "Daddy's gotta go to work, baby boy."

 

"Okay," William agreed reluctantly.

 

The next Saturday, the Washington Senators came to New York to lose again, and Mulder had acquired a radio-controlled toy boat for William to sail in Central Park. Mulder kept his eyes open for a nice, sneaky, well-dressed stepmother for Will, but Mulder waited a long time before one had come along.

 

*~*~*~*

 

When Mulder opened his eyes, Dana had her herbs lined up in the dirt like little green soldiers with orders to flourish. Basil and mint and thyme and oregano and rosemary, according to the neat labels. Dana took off her gardening gloves and dusted off her hands, looking pleased with herself. Emily slept in the hammock beside Mulder. Her skin looked too pale, but her blonde hair glistened in the sun.

 

Dana came over and slid carefully into the hammock beside Emily. She helped Mulder stare up at the tree leaves dancing above them in the spring breeze.

 

"The man you dated in college, the doctor. John." Mulder said, feeling lazily philosophical. "Was he the only fellow you were ever serious about? Before me, I mean?”

 

“I dated a few boys in high school, but John was my first real love," she answered easily. "He graduated from medical school a year before I finished college. A nice, Irish-Catholic doctor. My mother was thrilled. John wanted to get married before he shipped out, but I wanted to finish school."

 

"Would you have married him once you graduated?"

 

She considered a moment. "If he'd come back from Korea, I would have."

 

"How did he die?"

 

"The jeep he was in hit a landmine. By the time he reached the MASH unit, he'd bled to death." She paused a long time, looking at the rustling leaves. "What about you? Who was your first love?”

 

"In second grade, I wanted to marry Peggy Lane, but she punched me when I tried to kiss her at recess. I went to a private boys' high school. I was younger than most of the girls in university and then enrolled in graduate school and absorbed by that."

 

"What if you'd never met Phoebe?"

 

"I'd have gone to work for the FBI and been Hoover's darling. You mean would I have married? Probably. I grew up wanting to have a big family. Who would I have married, though? No idea." Mulder put his hands behind his head and pursed his lips. "Probably a tall, pretty brunette who adored me, adored our children, and didn't mind I was married to the FBI. That doesn't cast me in a flattering light, but it's true." He turned his head, grinning at her. "If I got injured in the line of duty, I would have tried to get my doctor's pretty nurse to meet me at a downtown hotel for a drink, since our marriages would have been miserable."

 

"I don't think I would have been miserable. I was a different person."

 

Mulder reconsidered. "I don't think I would have been miserable, either. Just different. It's amazing how one moment can change your entire life."

 

The hammock swayed, Emily slept, and the leaves overhead rustled in the wind. The sun shone through them, making shadows dance around the back yard. Mulder looked up at the dark window of Dana’s apartment, where he and Emily used to flash flashlights like fireflies trying to find each other.

 

"Must be fate," Dana told him.

 

"Must be," Mulder said.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder’s Manhattan apartment came with state-of-the-art kitchen appliances, including an oven never used until the last few months. He and Will probably did lead the league in room service, but Mulder could make coffee, tea, and scrambled eggs. He could open bottles, heat soup, pour cold cereal, and spread pretty much anything on bread. Within a block, he and William could get hot dogs, spaghetti, or a pizza pie - though not one as good as Patsy Grimaldi's pies in Brooklyn. Feasts could be amassed merely from the push carts in Central Park. Mulder and Will had fed themselves fine for years. Dana even taught William to make a grilled cheese sandwich though, without her supervision, Will produced a charred cheese sandwich. 

 

"Toast?" Dana rooted through Mulder’s icebox and cabinets. Her discoveries sat on the apartment’s kitchen counter: a half-empty jar of mustard, some stale crackers, a cracked egg, and an orange with a mushy brown spot. "I could have room service send up toast. Or I could call and have some groceries delivered. Mulder, you don't even have milk."

 

Mulder glanced up from the papers he held. “I don’t?” He strove for the perfect balance between innocent and interested, though he was neither. “I keep putting the order slip for the milkman in the window: eggs, milk, butter, cream. He never leaves anything on the ledge.”

 

Every month, Dana filled Mulder’s icebox and cabinets when she came to New York with Emily. Mulder and Will spent the following weeks consuming every crumb. Last week, they’d tossed a coin over a corner of congealed lasagna with noodles so old they'd started to get crispy.

 

“Emily, would you eat toast?” Dana checked.

 

Mulder suggested to Emily, who sat beside him on the counter, "Cinnamon toast."

 

Em echoed, "Cinnamo-"

 

"You need to eat real food before bedtime. Cinnamon toast is dessert."

 

"It is?" Mulder asked in surprise. Again, he looked up from the stack of papers prepared by the hotel “for your review, Mr. Mulder” which meant 'sign here.' "Why is bread with butter and jelly on it food, but bread with butter, cinnamon, and sugar on it dessert?"

 

Dana stopped searching. With her expression conveying the joy of an all-afternoon flight with a squirming child on her lap, she answered, "Because I'm the mommy and I say so, that's why."

 

Nonplussed, Mulder raised his eyebrows and grinned mischievously, then went back to his stack of papers. He flipped to the vaguely interesting parts. Walter Skinner had left another cryptic message at the front desk, which Mulder stuck in his shirt pocket to consider later.

 

"You need to eat something, Emily, or you'll be starving in a few hours." Dana tried again. "Oatmeal? That would be easy on your stomach."

 

"An oatmeal cookie," Mulder whispered into the girl's ear. "Oatmeal, flour, eggs, butter," he listed for Dana's approval. "Raisins? Aren't those formerly fruit? An oatmeal cookie? Crispy brown on the edges with gooey-wholesome-goodness in the center?"

 

"Look, Em: Mulder wants a spanking," Dana said sweetly.

 

Mulder feigned uncertainty for a second but gave her an eager grin.

 

Three little lines crinkled down Emily's forehead.

 

As Dana frowned, Mulder grabbed the top twenty pages of his stack, hopped down, and picked up Emily. "How 'bout we go downstairs and you can pick out anything you want? Mommy's tired and cranky, and Mulder wants to talk to the manager."

 

Dana responded, "Mommy would appreciate it if Mulder would use the phrase 'anything you want' much less with the children."

 

"Would you believe Will had dinner with seventeen people last Saturday?  William Mulder, Oak Room, party of eighteen. With a bar tab. He sent me the bill," he said, changing the subject and waving the restaurant check. "I can't think of seventeen people who'd even want to have dinner with me. Do you want to go raid the kitchen, Em?"

 

Emily was agreeable. The head chef would fix Em anything her heart desired, including a Brooklyn egg cream served with a phony French accent.

 

"Scully?"

 

"I'm still trying to think of your seventeen people," Dana said. "I'm up to six."

 

"Keep counting. Saturday, June eighteenth?" Three weeks should give Emily enough time to recuperate from her hospital ordeal day-after-tomorrow, and perhaps Will could clear his social calendar.

 

"Saturday, June eighteenth." Dana handed Mulder Emily's shoes to carry around. "Six o'clock."

 

"You're sure you don't want a big church wedding?"  

 

"With a fluffy white dress? Can we invite your ex-wife? Maybe Father McCue would do the Mass in your mother's synagogue."

 

"I see your point," he agreed. "One civil ceremony it is; I know all the best judges. Fifty people for the reception? I need to tell the chef."

 

"I think we can find fifty people who like us,” she assured him. “But ask the chef not to serve any food that might be used as a weapon."

 

*~*~*~*

 

The general manager droned on and on, apologizing profusely. Once he went away, Mulder propped his elbow on the cool, slick bar, rested his cheek on his fist, and stared miserably at his reflection in the mirrored wall.

 

Beside him, Emily continued her reign over the Palm Court, dipping her turkey drumstick with strawberry jam and gnawing it. Being a pragmatic duo, Mulder and Emily ate dessert first to make sure they had room for it - one chocolate torte and two spoons - and washed it down with Coca-Cola. Forty-five minutes later and solely responsible for a too-tired five-year-old on a sugar binge, he reconsidered that decision.    

 

"I am Emily; I am five," she informed the nearby patrons from her seat on - not at - the bar, swinging her feet happily. Most of Manhattan's preeminent society smiled in amusement at the out-of-place child and went back to their dinner, but the other part - the portion who would have paid someone to be born, reproduce, and die for them - flared their thin, aristocratic nostrils. Dana had battled Emily into a black pinafore and a white blouse this morning, but by evening the bow holding her hair had shifted to the left, smears of breakfast and lunch marked her blouse, and her white knee socks slouched around her ankles. Mulder still held her shiny black shoes, which hadn't touched her feet that day.

 

He sighed and let his elbow slide outward so his head was inches from the bar. Last Sunday morning's room service bill lay trapped and wilting under his glass. The ink bled blue: a late breakfast for two charged to him - except Mulder was in Georgetown last Sunday. William wasn’t supposed to have sleepovers at The Plaza without Mulder there, but this time the boy swung for the fences, punishment-wise. Will’s guest ordered a mimosa. Try as he might, Mulder couldn't see any of his son's hooligan friends ordering a champagne cocktail. Mulder had questioned the mistake, but the manager informed Mulder everything was in order; Will was sixteen, but the room service waiter checked the guest's ID and 'she' was of legal drinking age.         

 

"Mr. Mulder?" a man asked from behind him.

 

Mulder glanced up to see Walter Skinner's reflection looming in the mirror. "What?" he mumbled dejectedly.

 

"The front desk said you were in here." The big man shifted his feet and ran his fingers over his bald head as though he still expected to find hair. "I left messages for you."

 

"I got them; they were nice," Mulder answered sarcastically. "Enigmatic, but decisive. Don't worry. I read them and ate them; I wouldn't want to be a threat to national security."

 

Walter Skinner's reflection had the perplexed look of a man whose shorts started to creep up his backside, and he considered what he could discretely do about it. "I have a case I want you to look at."

 

"Me?" Mulder scoffed. "I'm not allowed, remember? I'm a communist, remember?" 

 

"I don't make all the decisions at the Bureau, Mr. Mulder, and I think blocking your research was a bad idea. A bad idea that will certainly cost lives. I don't care who you are or what you do for a living; if you can tell me who is perpetrating a crime, I'll listen," Mr. Skinner said, holding out a manila file. "Thirty bombings in New York over the last sixteen years, all in public places: the library, theaters, department stores, Grand Central Terminal, office buildings. The police receive warning letters a few days before each bomb so no lives have been lost - yet - but the bombings are becoming more frequent and there's less and less notice. Sooner or later, we're not going to find one in time. I'm off the FBI clock and I'm asking nicely. Will you look at the case or not?"

 

"You're desperate enough to ask me?"

 

"This isn't exactly on my way home from the office."

 

Mulder held out his hand for the file.

 

Mr. Skinner took a seat on the bar stool beside him. "It's all in there, everything we have."

 

"Okay. Watch her." Mulder nodded at Emily. "Don't let her go anywhere. Any more sugar and she may start to levitate."

 

"I am Emily; I am five," Emily informed Mr. Skinner. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand as she appraised her new victim. 

 

"I'm Walter; I'm... more than five," Skinner responded. His expression suggested his shorts crept higher, making him grimace like he'd accidentally snorted shampoo. 

 

"It's nice to see you again, Mr. Walter. Do you live here? I live here sometimes and sometimes we live in George's Town with Mulder in a big red house with lots of good hidin' places. I lived here when Mommy was away and we couldn't find my cat and Mommy was sick when she came back and she was better and Mulder and I used to flash with flashlights in the window - that was when I didn't live here anymore - and Mulder got shot and 'most died and Mommy and me live with him so you can sleep in Mommy's bed if you come spend the night with us 'cause Mommy sleeps with Mulder but don't tell Grammy 'cause it makes her mad but it's okay 'cause they're gettin' married in three weeks and I can come," Emily said in what seemed to be a single breath.

 

"Oh," Skinner answered.

 

Mulder didn't even look up.

 

"Mulder will be my step-daddy, but he says I can call him whatever I want, but Bub - his real name is Will - he calls him Daddy-O and Uncle Bill calls Mulder a S. O. D. 'cause Mommy got sick one time and we lived with Grammy. I get sick too and I get ice cream and chicken soup and sometimes Mommy cries and I get better but I'll be sick again soon 'cause I hafta get more shots but we're going to Coney Island first and I can have all the hot dogs I can eat. Mulder says 'one' when Mommy asks how many I've eaten and that's a lie but Mulder says it's not 'cause I did eat one right before I ate two more."

 

An uncertain, "Oh," again.

 

Emily paused to suck the last drops of her soda noisily through her straw. "My mommy is Mommy and Bub's mommy is Mrs. Mulder but Mommy will be Mrs. Mulder too, and that's confoos- Confus- Hard to 'member. Mulder and Bub's mommy used to be married but I've never met her and Bub says I'm not missin' much. Mommy says Mulder and Will are two peas in a pod and Bub's mommy can come to the wedding over her dead body but Mommy's teasing and she's not gonna die so I won't meet her there either. I think I'll call him Mulder after the wedding like I do now 'cause he looks like my real daddy but he's not, and I think he's nice even though Bub says he's sku-whah-air." She outlined a square in the air with her forefingers and nodding knowingly.

 

Skinner's eyes glazed like he'd spent hours watching a hamster run boogady-boogady-boogady on its little exercise wheel. If the FBI wanted to know secrets, no one needed to do a background check or keep a file on Mulder; ask a five-year-old.

 

"Mulder's Mommy is Mrs. Mulder too, but I've never met her either but Bub says she's Missus Have-a-sham but I don't know that name and Mulder said 'that’s not nice, Will,' but Bub says Mrs. Mulder - that's Mulder's Mommy - smells like mothballs and I don't like mothballs. Mulder told Mommy 'the moth's gonna miss those,' but I don't know what he means either and Will says my mommy has all the balls at our house anyway. So Mommy is Mrs. Mulder and Bub's mommy is Mrs. Mulder and Mulder's mommy is Mrs. Mulder too, so if you come to Christmas and bring presents, don't write 'Mrs. Mulder' on them because that's confoos- Cunfus- Hard to tell, 'cept for Missus Have-a-sham but I don't think she'll come to Christmas 'cause she didn't last time and neither did my Grammy 'cause of Mulder but my Grammy is Mrs. Scully, not Mrs. Mulder, so that would be all right."    

 

Skinner opened his lips but produced a numb "uuh," sound as his shorts began to hit home.

 

"What did you say, Em?" Mulder glanced up from the file. "Who do I look like?"

 

She shrugged, having run out of steam as abruptly as a wind-up hoppy toy.

 

Mulder closed the folder and laid it on the bar beside his glass. "Did you say I look like your real daddy? Is that true or are you pretending?"

 

Emily shrugged again but made a face as she worried her tongue around her mouth.

 

"Do you mean the man who was in our house last month? That man? Alex? Is that your real Daddy? I thought you were in the kitchen with Mrs. Franklin. Did that man talk to you? What did he say to you?"

 

"Mulder," she said uncertainly.

 

"What, honey?" he said softly, forgetting about the FBI file. "What is it? What did he say to you?"

 

"I'm gonna be sick."

 

"He said you'd be sick?"

 

In response, Emily burped, giving Mulder fair warning. 

 

Oh joy: another ray of sunshine to add to his evening. If Emily's 'real daddy' ever showed up, Mulder would let Em vomit all over him. Have one of those nosebleeds that seemed to last hours. Hand Real Daddy a stack of doctors’ bills. Then Mulder would shoot him.

 

"He's male. All bombers are male. Bright, but self-educated after high school," Mulder dictated impatiently for Mr. Skinner, who refused to go away. The Assistant Director followed Mulder as Mulder carried Em through the lobby, dodging the well-heeled, white-gloved masses. "He's paranoid, and paranoia peaks at around thirty-five. If he's been bombing for sixteen years, he's about fifty. English isn't his first language; his letters to the police read like a pulp fiction novel. He can speak English fairly well, but he built his vocabulary through books, not through conversation. He's single and lives with a female relative who takes care of him: an aunt or a sister. He's not married and never has been, but he's not a homosexual; no one can take Mommy's place."

 

"What else?"

 

Mulder leaned on the elevator button impatiently. Reaching in this pocket, he pulled out half a roll of Rolaids, and started popping into Emily as though she was a calcium-operated slot machine.

 

"He's reclusive, eccentric. He's the odd foreign man who lives with his sister and never speaks to anyone. The neighborhood kids are afraid of him. He's conservative, modest, precise, and meticulous. He couldn't make bombs for sixteen years and be careless. He needs to pay them back for what they did to him - the people who made him weak and the public who didn't believe him. He wants to be known; he wants credit for what he's done. That's why he sends the letters to the police. He wants to be someone important, because deep down he knows he's not."

 

"I need facts, Mr. Mulder, not feelings. Give me something I can tell my men. Who do we look for?"

 

"A single white male in his early 50's. A quiet European immigrant who learned English as a second language and who worked for Con Ed between the late 20's and early 30's. His first two bombings were Con Ed office buildings and he calls it 'The Consolidated Edison' in his letters to the police. No one's called it anything but 'Con Ed' in decades, like no one writes letters about 'dastardly deeds' like he does. He worked for one of the smaller utility companies that merged into Con Ed, so go through their old employee files. He was injured - or thinks he was injured - on the job and Con Ed denied his disability claim. He's paying them back, and when the public didn't react the way he wanted to his first bombings, he started paying the public back for not believing him. His frailties are real, though. Mild polio, or seizures, or TB. It may not be obvious, but it's there. He's weak and frustrated, and the bombs make him feel powerful. The bombs are phallic to him."

 

"He's mad at the power company and his mother, so he bombs innocent people who are trying to catch trains and check out library books?" Mr. Skinner said skeptically. "Why?"

 

"Because he's insane," Mulder answered. He shifted Emily from his left to his right hip as his arm began to tire. The elevator chimed.

 

"How can you predict all that from looking at the file for three minutes?"

 

"Most of the information was in the newspapers, except for his letters to the police. I can read the paper: the big words on the editorial page and everything. Agent Dales hasn't contacted me since early April if that's what you're asking. I don't want him in any more trouble."

 

"You put together a description of the bomber from the newspaper? If you had a description of this man, why didn't you tell someone?"

 

"I tried; you called me a communist and refused to take my calls," Mulder responded as he stepped into the elevator.

 

As Mulder turned around, looking out at the crowded lobby, he saw an old man standing a dozen feet behind Skinner, leaning against the back of a chair and savoring his cigarette. The old man nodded in acknowledgement and put his cigarette to his lips again. The same man had interrupted Mulder’s first 'big grownup date' with Dana, and watched them on Fifth Avenue last year, and been outside Mulder’s house last Halloween.

 

Mulder’s assessment remained the same: the old man was evil. Not evil that was base callousness or misguided nobility or necessary for the greater good, but pure primordial evil.

 

"Mulder," Emily whimpered.

 

"Hold on. We're going to Mommy, Em," Mulder assured her.

 

"I didn't call you a communist, Mr. Mulder,” Mr. Skinner said. “I don't make all the decisions at the FBI." He tucked the file under his arm and loosened his tie. "And I don't agree with this one. I get force fed a lot of bullshi- hockey in my job. No matter what I tell myself, some of it goes down the wrong way. If you think of anything else about this case, or any other case, my home number is on the back." The Assistant Director reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out a white business card. "I'm one of the good guys, and I'd appreciate a call."

 

Mulder tried to set Emily down, but she clung to him, eyeing the old man in the lobby. "Mulder," she whispered urgently. "We need to go!"

 

"Mr. Skinner," the smoking man said casually, "You're a long way from home."

 

Walter Skinner tensed at the man's voice. His posture changed from hesitantly friendly to rigid and contemptuous, like the little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Without a wasted motion, the card disappeared back into his pocket as smoothly as Dana could palm a coin.

 

"I understand you're getting married, Mr. Mulder," the Assistant Director said with a sudden hollow politeness.

 

Mulder nodded, confused.

 

"Congratulations," Mr. Skinner said. "Dana Scully is very special."

 

"Mr. Skinner," the older man repeated sharply. He stabbed out one cigarette and began the process of seducing another.

 

"Thank you," Mulder mumbled as the doors closed. 

 

Emily stopped trying to crawl inside Mulder’s skin and let him put her down, which he did automatically. The elevator chimed again, reaching the third floor. Mulder moved to the back to make room for the other guests. There were more chimes. Fashionable people came and went until they reached the tenth floor. The elevator held only Mulder, the operator, and Emily, who dozed on the chaise lounge behind him. She burped again as Mulder picked her up and settled against his shoulder. He carried her down the hall to his apartment. His body went through the motions but his mind broke the speed limit exponentially.

 

"Did you get her to eat before she conked out?" Dana asked. She’d wrapped the towel around her wet hair like a turban. She carried a steaming cup and followed Mulder as he took Emily to the couch. The soft, mellow smell of hot tea mixed with the scent of soap bubbles from her bath. "Do you want your own cup of tea, or will you drink half of mine?"   

 

Mulder didn't answer. He looked around the living room, trying to figure out what nagged at the back of his brain. Things looked normal, except not so lonely. Dana had unpacked and hung up their clothes. She’d laid out the swimsuits, towels, and Coppertone for Coney Island tomorrow. Her cream satin evening gown and his tuxedo waited beside the door for the maid to press. They had tickets for "Faust" at the opera tomorrow night, and Will had agreed to watch Em - which would likely end in an expensive disaster. Some magazines and his son's dog-eared copy of "Brave New World" - still unread except for the sex parts - served as a coaster for an empty soda bottle on the end table. Emily's one-eyed, no-eared stuffed Kitty occupied a chair beside one of the fireplaces, and Dana's textbooks and overnight case sat ready in the foyer. If Emily wasn't well enough to leave the hospital Tuesday night, Dana would send Mulder to get her things while she stayed with her daughter. 

 

Nothing looked wrong. The only things out of place were what made his New York world a home instead of a hotel room. This was the life Mulder dreamed of, fought for, prayed for. Only a fool would look any further. Mulder should accept the cup of tea from Dana, count his blessings, and forget the world outside for a few hours. Like that day in Central Park, all the gilded picture lacked was 'Norman Rockwell' scrawled at the bottom, and it had the same surreal, too perfect atmosphere.

 

"Mulder?" Dana said questioningly.

 

"She ate some turkey. She drank some, uh... Scully?"

 

Dana blew across the surface of her tea. "Hum?"  

 

He looked around again. "I'm, uh, I need to go downstairs and take care of a few more things. Business things. I was just bringing her up."

 

"Are you okay?"

 

"Yes. Sure. Go on to bed."

 

"Wake me later?" she invited.

 

“I thought you’d, you’d be, uh, be-” he said awkwardly. “Tired.”

 

Dana leaned over to pull off Em's knee socks. From Mulder’s viewpoint, Dana wore nothing beneath her robe except glistening white skin and the exotic scent of body lotion or perfume. “Hence, letting me sleep now and waking me later.”

 

They’d adopted the ‘we’re almost married’ approach to lovemaking for months - a convenient relative of the ‘we’re married now’ line of moral reasoning. If Dana didn’t object, Mulder wasn’t likely to, either.

 

“Okay.” Mulder kissed her cheek. "Bet on it."

 

His Cadillac, the Porsche, and Will’s Thunderbird remained in Georgetown. The valet brought the newest addition to Mulder’s automobile collection: a sleek, black Chrysler convertible large enough to hold everyone but small enough Dana could see over the steering wheel. She’d refused to let Mulder buy her a car, so he’d bought himself a car Dana liked at the dealership and often drove.

 

The valet put the top down. After Mulder pulled away from The Plaza, he circled the block while he tried to decide his destination. In Manhattan, circling the block could take a half an hour. He saw his apartment windows darken; Dana had gone to bed. Mulder did a lap around Central Park, enjoying the cool night air, and drove past Phoebe's apartment on Park Avenue to see if the light remained on in Will's bedroom. It did.

 

Making up his mind, Mulder hit the blinker. He slid between two taxis, made a left, and pointed the new Chrysler downtown.

 

He walked through the rheumatic bowels of the parking building and around back to the warehouse's old freight elevator, which smelled of take-out food, secrets, and loneliness. The building had a lobby entrance, but Frohike never used it. The freight elevator was private and direct, if less pretty.

 

Frohike had his office across town professionally decorated. Butter wouldn't melt in Frohike’s mouth while reporters aimed cameras and microphones at one of his priceless athletes. Melvin Frohike was the silver-tongued devil a hundred phenomenally talented young men called to bail them out, smooth things over, speak for them, seal the deal, and be father, friend, and handler. “Help them remember the don'ts,” as Frohike put it. In private though, he and Mulder weren't so different. Both men played the game because they got paid to, played it well, and went home alone.         

 

Mulder pounded on the steel security door of the top floor until Frohike answered. The little man wore his pajamas, flak jacket and, for some reason, his old olive green combat helmet. "I have an office and office hours, Mulder," his agent reminded him, and yawned. "What do you want?"

 

"I want my money's worth," Mulder answered, and stepped inside.

 

*~*~*~*

 

While he waited, Mulder opened Frohike's telephone book and thumbed through it. Uncle Freaky still did it: read the obituaries and crossed the dead people’s names out of the phone book. The living people Frohike didn't like had little stars beside them so he could find them faster if they died. Phoebe merited two stars.

 

Frohike emerged from behind the screen in slacks and a short-sleeve shirt that more or less matched. He poured himself a mug of the strong coffee Mulder had made and sank into a chair. "Okay. I'm awake. What is it? What's wrong? Is it Will again?"

 

Mulder leaned forward, chewing the inside of his lip. "I-I don't know."

 

"You woke me at one in the morning to tell me you don't know what's wrong?"

 

"A man came in our house last month looking for something,” Mulder said. “I told you about him. He looked like one of the men Emily described to the sketch artist. Will says he's the man who shot me, Emily says he's her father, and Dana says she doesn't know him. I think both the children are telling the truth, but I think Dana's telling the truth, too. I saw an old man in the hotel lobby tonight; I've seen him a few times before and he gives me a weird feeling."

 

Frohike sipped his coffee. "You woke me up at one in the morning because you have a case of the heebie-jeebies? A shot of penicillin will cure that, but you'd better hope Dana doesn't find out."

 

Mulder ran his fingers through his hair. "You know what I mean. Every time I tell Dana I have a weird feeling, she says it's gas - or some long medical term meaning 'gas.'"

 

"You told me to drop it, Mulder."

 

He shook his head. "But I know you didn't. I need to know what to believe."

 

"Are you sure?"

 

"What do you mean am I sure? Of course I'm sure. It's my life, my family, my-" he started to say 'babies' but didn't. "Dana set a date. We're getting married in June."

 

"Congratulations."

 

Mulder swallowed. "I want to know what's happening. I want to know what Dana told you. I need to know."

 

"She didn't tell me a thing."

 

"I want to know what I am."

 

Frohike paused a second. He picked up his hat and keys, looking like a man with a destination. "I bought a new truck this afternoon."

 

It was Mulder's turn to say, "Congratulations. What a splurge: a new automobile every two decades. Were you waiting for Henry Ford to make another one you liked?"

 

"Another one where my feet reach the pedals," Frohike shot back with equal sarcasm. "Do you feel like going for a drive uptown, Mulder?"

 

*~*~*~*         

 

"Wow," Mulder said in mock reverence. He got of the passenger's side of Frohike's new Ford pickup truck. "It's a baseball stadium, right?"

 

"The house Babe Ruth built and you decorated," his driver quipped, and killed the engine. "I made five percent of both. You're a lot less trouble than Babe Ruth was, by the way. At least, you used to be."

 

Mulder put his hands on his hips. "What the hell are we doin' here, Frohike?"

 

"We're playing baseball. What else would we be doing here? Can you still get in?"

 

"Unless the Yankees heard I was a communist and changed the locks."

 

"Who in the Hell said you were a communist?" Frohike demanded.

 

"Never mind. Yes, I can get in."

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder turned on the floodlights near home plate, illuminating the empty field and stands, but left the outfield in shadow. It echoed - the silent openness. A baseball field gave a man room to think, and it set him free to hold his head higher.

 

While the old Negro groundskeeper readied the pitching machine, Mulder picked a bat off the rack and caressed the smooth ash wood. He could have been touching a woman's body; it felt as sensual. It was an old friend. “Don't screw it up,” he used to repeat to himself, and pick his bat, adjust his cap, shut out the world, and walk out on the field. Mulder was twenty-four years old and scared to death the first time he set foot on Yankee Field, and thirty-eight and a living legend when he stepped off. In between those years, he chanted those words to himself and walked up to bat almost seven thousand times.

 

"What's it like?" Frohike asked, following Mulder to the plate.

 

Mulder took a gentle practice swing. He adjusted his grip and swung harder. The bat whistled through the night air. 

 

"To be born able to do that?" Frohike continued. "To do it effortlessly. What's it like?"

 

Staring out at the darkness, Mulder answered truthfully, "It's not bad. In 1941, I got a base hit every game for fifty-six straight games. It set a record no one's broken. The newspapers kept track on the front page: how long could I go before someone struck me out?"

 

"I remember," Frohike said reverently.

 

"If a professional baseball player ever had a moment in the sun, that summer was it. I was America's hero for hitting a baseball. When they're right, real, pure - baseball, music, and love - they wash the dust off of life.”

 

Mulder saw Frohike nod in agreement.

 

“But with professional baseball,” Mulder continued, “you trade that boyhood love of the game for a paycheck. It's not sandlot ball anymore; it’s a job, and you're paid to perform. If you can't, a thousand men in the minors can. You spend weeks away from home. You eat alone, sleep alone. You get so lonely you ache. It’s a job,” he repeated. He looked out at the dark field and up at the stars over the Bronx. “Baseball has been good to me, but the best times in my life, Frohike: every second with Will and every second with Dana and Emily Scully. Every second with Sam, too. The summer of 1941, I did my job - and by chance set a baseball record.”

 

"The Yankees are offering a hundred and forty grand if you come back for one more season, Mulder. I wouldn't mind having five percent of that. A hundred and forty thousand dollars to swing a bat occasionally and listen to fans cheer. You'd be the highest paid baseball player in history."

 

Without hesitation, Mulder shook his head.

 

"Ready, sirs?" the groundskeeper asked from the pitcher's mound sixty feet away.

 

"Ready," Mulder called back. "I don't know what I'm doing here, but I'm ready. What are you trying to prove, Frohike? Who cares if I can still hit a baseball?"

 

"Do it," Frohike ordered.

 

"You're not going to make me run, are you?"

 

"Hit the damn ball, Mulder. If you hit it over the wall, you can run as slow as you like."

 

Mulder shrugged and raised the bat.

 

He quickly and cleanly hit ten of the two-dozen balls the machine launched at him, and he clipped another few. That wasn't a bad average, given he hadn't played in a year and a half.  

 

He stood at home plate, staring out at the stands and remembering a thousand summer afternoons. Frohike told him to get ready again. Like an automaton, Mulder raised the bat. The pitching machine had been rolled to the side and the old Colored groundskeeper held the ball.

 

"Come on, Frohike. You must be joking. I can hit anything he can throw at-"

 

Mulder swung quickly at a fastball that would make any major league pitcher proud, making contact with a bone-jarring crack. Three heartbeats later the ball arched into the sky and vanished somewhere over the back fence. Homerun number two hundred and seventy-four.

 

"My God! That had flames after it!" Mulder called, and chuckled.

 

From the pitcher's mound, the Negro man grinned and squared his shoulders. Mulder snorted and pointed the bat at him, indicating Mulder was ready this time. He dug in again.

 

A curve ball followed, which Mulder sent between second and third base and eventually heard thud as it hit the fence. "Too easy. What else do you have?" he challenged, raising the bat.

 

The next pitch blazed expertly into the outside edge of the strike zone, met the sweet spot of his bat, and soared high into left field. 

 

Mulder grinned. He saw groundskeeper's dark eyes twinkling. Mulder couldn't feel his left hand anymore, but as long as it continued to hold the bat, he didn’t worry. He played baseball. He felt the joy of it, like the game was warm water flowing around him.

 

The old Negro man threw more curve balls, fastballs, and the exotic ones: sinkers, high heat, hanging curves, fork balls, knuckle balls - all delivered with marksman-like precision and meteoric speed. For a few minutes, no one kept score, and the game had magic again.

 

"You're showing off," Mulder yelled at the mound as he began to hurt.

 

The pitcher nodded he did indeed show off, and picked up another ball. Mulder figured the old man couldn’t keep up the fastballs, but he was wrong. After a few more hundred mile-per-hour pitches met his bat and went sailing over the wall, Mulder stepped back and shook his head. He was done.

 

"You okay, Mulder?" Frohike asked. 

 

The groundskeeper nodded in satisfaction, grinned, headed to the dark outfield, and faded from sight.

 

"Okay. Sore and humiliated, but okay.” Mulder rolled his left shoulder. “Who was he? And don't tell me he's the groundskeeper."

 

"Between you and me? He calls himself ‘Joshua Xavier Lee,’ but I did some checking. His real name’s Josh Exley. Twenty years ago, he was a Negro League legend. By the time the majors started letting Negroes play, Exley was past his prime."

 

"If he’s past his prime, I'm glad I didn't step up to bat when he was at his best." Mulder’s left hand was numb. He rolled his shoulder again, trying to ease the ache in it. "Okay, aside from embarrassing me, what was the point?"

 

"Simple math," Frohike responded, and took the bat from Mulder. Frohike slid the bat back into the rack. He walked out on the baseball diamond and sat down on the grass with a series of pained cracks and grunts. "Out of twenty-four pitches from the pitching machine, you hit ten. Out of twenty-four pitches from a man - tough pitches - you hit all twenty-four. You've never stepped up to bat with him on the mound. There's no difference between the pitching machine and Exley, except you hit less than half the pitches from the machine and every pitch from the person. How do you explain that?"

 

"I'm not sure." Mulder scratched his head as he sat down beside Frohike. "Maybe I had to get warmed up. Or not enough trials to establish a reliable pattern?"

 

"You played for twelve seasons, total; that's a reliable pattern."

 

Mulder watched his left hand as he flexed it. "Tell me something, Frohike. Something not a riddle."

 

"What if you know on a subconscious level what the pitcher will throw, but you can't predict the machine? I've been thinking about it - about what I asked you last year. You're naturally athletic, but how did you pick up a bat and set the baseball world on fire? Maybe you have an edge the rest of the players don't. You can read the pitcher's mind."

 

"Frohike-" Mulder lay back on the cool grass and rested his head on his palm. “-read this thought."

 

"Not on a conscious level, but enough you can anticipate things. You just know things. I've seen it a hundred times: you pick up the phone right before it rings and it's Dana calling you. I think of you and you're at my door. That old Look magazine article about your service during World War II? How many medals did it say the Army gave you? How many Nazi soldiers did you shoot?"

 

"I stopped counting." Mulder lied. He could have told Frohike the exact number.

 

"Safe to say: a lot more than most GI's? I've been thinking about that, too. It's easier to hit the enemy if you know where he’ll move or what he's thinking. Mulder, I think it's some form of a sixth sense."

 

"I did the Zeener cards at Oxford. Those cards they use to test psychic ability. They hold up a card and you guess what's on it. I was a test subject in one of my professor's experiments. It took hours."

 

"And?" 

 

"And Phoebe showed up and we got married and moved to New York and Will came and I never went back." Mulder thought a while as he watched the stars shift across the broad night sky over the Bronx. "What if you're right?" he asked after a few minutes, still looking at the sky. "What if I do sense things other people don't? What if I just know things? What does that mean? What does that make me?"

 

"Dangerous," Frohike speculated, sounding half-joking.

 

“I can tell what Dana's thinking sometimes." Mulder decided he didn't care if Frohike thought he was crazy or not. "Other people, I sense their emotions or pain, but Dana... I have to be relaxed and close to her, but I hear her speak inside my head or I see her thoughts. I think she can hear me too if I want her to. Sometimes I can feel what she's feeling - the physical sensations."

 

"How physically close?"

 

"Close," Mulder responded tightly.

 

"You can feel exactly what she's feeling?"

 

Mulder nodded.

 

A few seconds passed before Frohike asked, "Is there any chance - and I'm willing to pay money - you'll tell me more about that?"

 

"No. I can tell you I can't usually make it happen. It just does, sometimes. I'll tell you it didn't happen until after I got shot and the doctors started worrying about brain damage. I think you're right. I've always been able to do it; I didn't know I should be able to do it if that makes sense. I know I can't fly, so I don't let myself try to fly. When I got shot, I think I did suffer some brain damage. The 'can't' valve in my brain got damaged. It got switched off."

 

Frohike offered, "A lot of money. I have a lot of money, Mulder."

 

"No."

 

The sky above them was a silent, black infinity speckled with stars. It seemed immense beyond comprehension. Mulder looked at it sometimes, studying the stars, and wondered if anything out there looked back. Or if they were all alone. Was humanity part of a greater, unknown whole or a cosmic anomaly - a Darwinian hiccup like Mulder?

 

"This sixth sense, as you call it: do you think it's something I could pass on?" Mulder asked eventually. "Like being colorblind? Will and I are both colorblind."

 

"Being colorblind passes through the mother; it came from Phoebe. But this, this gift, if it's hereditary? Yes, I suppose you could pass it on. It could be something you were bred to have, or a genetic fluke, but either way, yes. You'd need a woman with the right genetic makeup, as you would to pass on a certain eye or hair color. If you happened onto a woman, especially if her suitability as a breeder was known, and she happened to conceive..."

 

"I'm not Emily's father. Not even via your turkey baster theory. I had the blood types checked, and we don't match."

 

"I know; I saw the bill for the paternity test. Don't frighten Byers like that.” Frohike cleared his throat. “No, she doesn't match you, but I guarantee she doesn't match Alex Krycek either."

 

Mulder's head snapped toward Frohike. "How do you know? Did you track him down?" 

 

"No. As far as I can tell, Alex Krycek is a name on a piece of paper." Frohike hesitated like a man contemplating biting into an under-ripe banana. "Mulder, that child's blood type doesn't match anyone's. That's why she's sick. Her body doesn't recognize some of her own cells as human. That means she's not completely human. She's a human-hybrid."

 

"She's a little girl," Mulder insisted. "Not an orchid. What the hell are you talking about?"

 

"Her body's attacking itself,” Frohike said. “Why? What does the immune system attack? Anything foreign. That's why we can't put one person's heart or lung into another person's body. We reject foreign tissue, like Emily's immune system rejects her own red blood cells. However she was created, someone tampered with her genetics and the result isn't harmonious. The two tissues can't quite co-exist. If I was that scientist, I'd go back to the drawing board with tissue from the same mother but a more suitable father. I'd probably have better success hybridizing that tissue because it would be a closer match. I wouldn't need a living child - just tissue."

 

Mulder turned those words over in his head. He might as well try to dig to the bottom of the beach; he could scoop as fast and hard as he liked but would only find more sand.  

 

"Dana was gone three months, Mulder. You said, if you were the father, she wasn’t more than three months along. I checked that out. Until a fetus - an unborn baby - is three months old, it has no immune system. If foreign tissue is injected into it, the fetus incorporates it and continues to develop, and the result is something not quite human. The Nazis figured that out, but they couldn't get a human-hybrid to be born alive. What if their experiments never stopped?"

 

A chill crept down Mulder's spine, lifting the hair on his forearms. He thought of his blonde cousin's body in the Nazi train car. His aunt and grandmother, far too old to be pregnant, yet it looked as if they were. He thought of Samantha. Aside from his mother, Mulder didn't have a single living female relative.

 

"They never found those doctors." Mulder bit his lower lip and wished he still smoked. This would be a good time to smoke and pace.

 

Though no one else could hear, Frohike spoke quietly. "What if they did find them? Do you think any government would throw away decades of research attempting to create a super-soldier? There are whispers we didn't; we brought the Japanese and Nazi scientists to the US and put them to work in our labs, on our agendas, and we've had ten years to perfect the science. Take those advances, add a suitable female and your genetics, and you have something any government would kill for. Think about what you are: a telepathic, highly-athletic genius who doesn't need to sleep or eat or take time to heal. A human weapon. Now improve on that."

 

Mulder sat up. He leaned forward and wrapped his arms around his knees as though he felt cold. He stared at nothing, not even bothering to focus his eyes.

 

"Or I could be completely wrong, Mulder. I hear whispers, and I like a good conspiracy theory as well as the next fellow, but in the end, I just manage baseball players and rebuild an occasional pinball machine."

 

"You're not wrong."

 

"Okay," Frohike said neutrally.

 

"There's something else I can do now," he said after a moment. "But you can't tell Dana. Ever. You can't ever tell anyone."

 

"I won't," Frohike promised. "You know I won't."

 

Mulder rolled his sore shoulder and looked around. He saw a baseball on the grass a foot from him. He looked at Frohike and reached out his hand. The ball rolled inches to his fingertips. Mulder picked it up.

 

"Jesus Christ," Frohike said slowly. "How did you do that?"

 

"I want it," Mulder said slowly, trying to put it into words. He toyed with the ball. "You're right. It's like an instinct or a sense. If I want to see something, my eyes focus on it. My ears hear what I want to listen to. If my mind wants something, it attracts it, I think."

 

"Do it again," his agent requested.

 

Mulder put the ball down on the grass, moved his hand away, and pushed his palm as if to shove it. Without his hand touching it, the baseball rolled quickly and obediently into the darkness. "Which would make me a telepathic, telekinetic, athletic, genius human weapon. Now improve on that: factor in a suitable female, take our babies, and leave Dana to die."

 

"Jesus Christ," his agent repeated, and lapsed into an uncomfortable silence.

 

Mulder felt Frohike's uncertainty: waves of it, each pushing him farther away. The set of the sail, he told himself silently. It's the set of the sail, not the direction of the wind that determines a ship's course.

 

"That's gotta be useful if you drop the soap," Frohike said, sounding falsely glib. "Can you, can you read my mind?"

 

"No. But I can tell you're frightened."

 

"I'm trying hard not to be."

 

"Do you have a 'don't' for this, Melvin?" he asked. "Because I don't want to be a human weapon. I don't want to be Superhuman. I quit. I retire. I want to marry Dana Scully next month and have four or five healthy, unremarkable children and live in a quiet house beside a lake."

 

Frohike quipped, "I like happy endings," but swallowed and admitted, "I don't know, Mulder."

 

Mulder kept thinking of the Nazi death camp and the serenity he'd found in cold-blooded murder. He thought of being with a woman when love-making stopped being play and became carnal and dangerous. After a few drinks, as dark instincts took over: being rough enough to leave marks and insistent enough to be ashamed afterward. He thought of the flashes of light and the phrases he wrote the day his father died - and the look in Bill Mulder's eyes as he shot that rabid puppy, all those years ago. Regardless of what Mulder was, or why, he had darkness bred into his soul.

 

Perhaps, as much as Bill Mulder denied God and believed the future of mankind lay in science and technology, Mulder was born to fight the future. Maybe Mulder and Samantha were the future, and Bill Mulder's dying wish had been for it all to stop.

 

"I'd like to go back to Manhattan." Mulder got up and brushed off. "Would you drive me back?" he asked hoarsely. "I want to check on Dana and Em."

 

"Sure," Frohike answered, and what Mulder sensed from the little man was pity.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Fifth Avenue hadn't vanished. The Plaza still stood. Hitler’s ‘Empire of 1,000 Years’ lasted barely 12, but the Dutch colony that started as New Amsterdam three centuries ago and became Manhattan would likely survive the millennium based on chutzpah alone.

 

As Mulder walked through The Plaza’s lobby, a uniformed concierge congratulated him on his upcoming marriage. Mulder pressed the elevator button. The elevator came and delivered him to the right floor, although Mulder half-expected the doors to close on one universe and open to another.

 

A lamp burned in the foyer but otherwise his apartment was dark and silent. Dana and Emily had been asleep for hours. Mulder paused in front of the mirror, checking his reflection as though it might have changed. It hadn't: not after Samantha disappeared, not after he'd been with Phoebe, not after he became a husband, a father, a professional baseball player, or a soldier. On those days, life leapt forward, and Mulder felt so different inside he expected the rest of the world could tell.

 

But no one could. He saw the same hodge-podge mug of his parents' features staring back at him. Mulder saw his father's face in Will's, but he’d seen Bill Mulder in Alex Krycek's face, too.

 

If Mulder went out with Emily and Will, numerous fans, stopping him to get an autograph, had commented how much both children resembled Mulder. He'd smiled, signed his name, and as of late, passed the paper or ball to Emily so she could print 'EM'. Sometimes, Will got a turn, grudgingly scrawling 'Bub' at Emily's insistence. Dana explained the concept of autographs and fans to Emily, to no avail. Emily could write her name now, like Mulder, and she happily obliged all the random strangers who asked. Fans were either puzzled or bemused, but Mulder never had one object.

 

He couldn't imagine how a sweet little girl came from something so dark Dana still had nightmares.

 

It was too late to think anymore. Normal people either slept or made love at this hour. To that end, Mulder stripped off all his clothes, leaving a messy, dusty crumple beside the bed. He crawled under the covers, to Dana, and found nothing between his skin and hers but heat. Her pajamas lay on the foot of the bed, and her robe hung nearby, but Dana wasn’t wearing a stitch.

 

"Hi," she murmured sleepily. "Late."

 

"Hi," Mulder breathed back.

 

“Important business?”

 

“Not as important as this,” he answered.

 

Dana skipped further fine-how-are-you’s and rolled to her back. He took her nipple greedily in his mouth. She arched her body and shifted under him.

 

They made love for the first time in this bed. They conceived life in this bed, but there would never be another. Never. Mulder would call the doctor next week, make himself an appointment, and make sure of it.

 

Mulder could make love to her the way a musician could play an instrument blindfolded. He could make her hips thrust, her breath catch, her toes curl effortlessly. In the last months, he made love to her as reverently as a bridegroom and as passionately as a summer storm. She must assume sex was always this way, and he never wanted her to think otherwise. If two people loved each other, it should be ballet without music, physical poetry without words. Love should be just the two of them and the simple, ancient math of creation.

 

In her arms and deep inside her mind, he found a place where she loved him unconditionally. Mulder wanted to be there, to let the world slip away and feel the exquisite hum of her body in tune with his. 

 

No more thinking. He entered her slowly, feeling both the delicious tight embrace of her body around him, and also her sensations: being penetrated, filled. Trusting him, loving him. Letting him love her. He thrust; she gasped. Her pulse quickened, her muscles tensed, and her fingers tightened against his. Her skin was moist and slick and salty, her breath felt hot and fast. He heard what she wanted: how hard, how fast. As he moved, there was a lull, like an orchestra building to a crescendo, then louder and faster and bolder, and an explosion of dazzling fireworks and a warm tide sweeping over her body. He came with her, with every wonderful sensation in the universe focused and flowing through him. Afterward, Mulder lay with her silently, looking out the window at the skyline over Central Park.

 

He rested hand on Dana as she slept, with his palm on the bone at the top of her hip, and his fingers low on her belly.

 

For a little while, there was peace in the quiet before dawn.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder first thought he had the wrong apartment but compared his watch with the figure in the doorway. At seven-thirty AM on Memorial Day Phoebe wore heavy makeup and an elaborate hairdo, but not a stitch beneath her long silk robe. Yes, Mulder had the right place, and this had all the makings of A Very Bad Idea.

 

He would not look at her nipples.

 

He wasn't a fish who snapped at anything shiny and ended up with a hook through his cheek - or a ring through his nose - for the rest of his life. Mulder was getting married, and Dana and Emily waited in the car downstairs, and he came up to talk with Phoebe about Will, and Mulder wouldn’t screw it up.

 

"Dana's waiting," Mulder announced.

 

He would not look at her nipples. God purposely put those on females so males would never get anything accomplished. Men got brawn, but women got breasts; Nature plotted against Darwin. If any other lump of flesh was noticeable under fabric, someone should see a doctor; call that lump a nipple and the male frontal lobe developed a case of hiccups.

   

"Fox, come in," Phoebe held open the door. "William's washing up. Do you want coffee?"

 

"I have a cup in the car. The doorman said to come up. Dana's waiting."  

 

"You said you wanted to talk. Come in. Sit down."

 

"I didn't mean we had to talk this morning. I didn't mean to wake you. I called to wake Will, not get you out of bed this early."  

 

"We can talk now. Come in. What about orange juice?"

 

Phoebe turned away, making his life easier. Mulder followed the flowing ivory hem of her robe through the apartment. He took the opportunity to see what his alimony and child support checks went toward. From the time the boy turned seven, Phoebe had Will wait with the doorman or his nanny downstairs when Mulder came to pick him up. In all these years, Mulder had never been past the lobby. The apartment he paid for looked homey in an over-furnished brothel kind of way.

 

"Did you want orange juice?" Phoebe repeated as she picked up her mug of coffee from the kitchen counter.

 

"No, I'm fine. Is Will ready?"

 

"He's washing up."

 

"Oh," Mulder mumbled, realizing he'd been told once.

 

"We have bagels."

 

"I wouldn't want you to go to any trouble."

 

"It's no trouble," his ex-wife responded. A door whooshed open at the other end of the apartment. "William, do you want a bagel?"

 

"Uhhhh... No, thank you," a confused-sounding voice answered. A few seconds later, Will ambled into the kitchen in his blue jeans and an undershirt with a flaming eight ball embroidered on the front. He finger-combed his wet hair and looked certain he’d heard wrong. Mulder watched William take in the scene. Phoebe flitted around like a combination of Mae West and June Cleaver while Mulder probably looked like the dog next in line to see the vet.  

 

"I wanted to talk to your mother," Mulder said, slouching. "Is that what you're wearing to Coney Island?"

 

"No, this is my kit while you and Mother are fighting," William answered evasively. "Or whatever it is you're doing."

 

"We're not fighting. We're talking."

 

"Hurry up; your father's waiting." Phoebe poured a cup of coffee for Will. "I packed your trunks and a towel. They're in the rucksack by the door."

 

Will blinked his eyes and shook his head. "Are you okay, Mother?"

 

"Of course I'm okay, dear."

 

Will looked back at his father. Mulder slouched lower against the counter and shoved his hands in his trouser pockets. The boy asked, "Does Dana know you're here?"

 

"She's downstairs. Your mother and I are adults, Will. We can have a civil conversation."      

 

After a few more glances at his parents, Will shrugged and turned back to his bedroom. "I'll need to see my shrink twice a week," Mulder heard him mumble as he walked away.

 

Mulder smiled but Phoebe didn't seem amused. "We were planning on breakfast at Aiello's, Phoebe. We have blueberry pancakes."

 

"What is it, Fox?" Her face disappeared behind her cup for a few seconds. A drop of coffee threatened to drip from the rim as she lowered the mug; she caught it expertly with the tip of her tongue and licked her lips. "You said you wanted to talk."

 

"Oh. Will. I don't think it's a good idea for him to be at The Plaza anymore if I'm not there. We've talked about it and-"

 

"We?"     

 

"Dana and I. We talked this morning. I wanted to talk with you, too," Mulder hurried to add. "I wanted to see what you thought."

 

"Do you mean he's at your hotel when you're not? William’s there alone? He's sixteen-years-old!"

 

Mulder's eyebrows met at a perplexed angle. "Of course, he's there alone when I'm in Georgetown. The staff keeps tabs on him. Will lounges around, eats, sleeps, watches television, eats, talks on the phone, eats. You know that. You send him over there all the time. Anyway-"       

 

"No, I did not know that," she said evenly. "I thought you were there with him."

 

"Oh, of course you knew. Know."   

 

She had been leaning against the counter, but stood quickly and called, "William!"

 

"Yes, Ma'am?"

 

"Come here right now!"

 

"Phoebe, I'm sure you knew I wasn't there," Mulder insisted, slow on the uptake in his sleep-deprived state.

 

Will returned wearing a black satin shirt with glowing yellow flames on the shoulders and sleeves - a step up from the flaming eight ball. "Yes, Ma'am?"

 

"Why did you tell me your father was at The Plaza when he wasn't? I had no idea you were there alone." 

 

A stunned silence followed. Will's gaze cut back and forth between his father's likely puzzled expression and the hungry, desperate gleam in his mother's eyes. Stubbing out an imaginary cigarette butt with the toe of his sneaker, William mumbled, "I thought I told you."

 

"You're calling me a liar?" Phoebe crossed her arms.

 

"No, Ma'am," Will told the marble-tiled floor. "I thought-"

 

"You said your father was there when he wasn't. I would never have let you be there alone. How-"

 

"Phoebs," Mulder interrupted, "I don't know what you're talking about and neither does Will. You've called me in Georgetown and told me you had company and William was at The Plaza for the night. There's no way you could think I was in New York if you called me in DC."

 

"Did you lie to me, William?" Phoebe asked sharply.

 

The boy glanced at his father from underneath his eyelashes, and mumbled, "Yes, Ma'am," in a way making Mulder's heart hurt.

 

Mulder pursed his lips but succeeding in blowing air instead of producing words. "Okay," he said slowly. "I'm not arguing. From now on, you're not to be at The Plaza alone, Will. No exceptions. If you do it again, I'm taking the car."

 

"Are you punishing him? Fox Mulder, playboy-of-the-decade, is acting like a parent? It only took you sixteen years. What did you do, William?" Phoebe hissed at their son. "What the bloody hell have you been doing over there?"

 

Will's cheekbones stood out as he clenched his teeth, so Mulder answered, "He had dinner with his friends, and when the check came, everyone else had misplaced their wallets. So Will charged the check to me and he'll play busboy next weekend to pay me back, right Will? Including the bar tab. There will be no bar tabs, William. Is that clear?"

 

Will nodded without looking up.

 

"Okay. Go change your shirt," Mulder said. "Go put on something that won't blind people." As soon as Will was out of the kitchen and probably settled in the living room to eavesdrop, Mulder asked, "Please, let's not do this, Phoebe. He's a teenage boy and he needs reined in a little. I thought for once, you and I might be able to handle something without lawyers and a judge."

 

"I'm handling it. I'm the one who's here every single day. I'm not the one who lets the boy run wild and sweeps in and expects to sort it all out with a big check. You expect him to keep his trousers buttoned because you tell him to?"

  

"I have talked to him. I do not let him run wild. I can't handcuff him to the radiator, but I know where he is and who his friends are," Mulder insisted. "What else do you want me to do?"

 

"I want you to set an example instead of shacking up with a redheaded whore!"

 

Mulder exhaled through his nose. He took another breath and answered slowly, "You can call her Dana. Or you can call her Mrs. Mulder. But if you call her a whore again-"

 

"You married her?"

 

"We're getting married in three weeks," he said, as calm and quiet as Phoebe was shrill and dramatic.

 

"Is she up the duff again?" Steam seemed to seep from her ears. She slammed her coffee mug on the counter and barked, "William!"

 

"No," Mulder barked back. "You're not doing this to him! You're making him crazy! Whatever insane scheme is cooking inside your head, you're not using him in it."

 

Will appeared instantaneously. "Yes, Ma'am?"

 

"We're leaving, Will," Mulder ordered. "Let's go. Phoebe, he's spending the day with Dana and me, and he's babysitting Emily tonight. We're hoping Em's well enough to go back to Georgetown tomorrow night, but if she's not, he can spend Tuesday night with us, too. I'll take him to school Wednesday morning."

 

"I get no say in this? You're the rich Yankee so you tell me the way it's going to be and I get no choice? I think that's how I got up the duff, wasn't it? You got pissed and I didn't get a choice?"

 

Mulder took his son by the shoulder and steered him toward the front door.

 

Phoebe stepped in front of them. "What did you do, William? Your father's lying for you, like you lie for him. You two are exactly alike. I can't imagine how you're my son."

 

"Neither can I," Will muttered under his breath.

 

Phoebe slapped the boy hard across the face.

 

Mulder saw blood red, then sepia tones of pinkish-brown. He grabbed Phoebe and shoved her against the wall, yelling, "How dare you, you insane bitch!" as she screamed back hysterically she was sorry. Mulder held her there as she sobbed, keeping his hands around her arms - not hurting, but not letting go, either.                        

 

"Dad," Will's frightened voice pleaded, "Dad, let her go. She didn't mean it. She's sorry. Let her go; you're scaring her."

 

"Good."

 

"Dad, she's crying. It was an accident. Don't hurt her, please."

 

Mulder let go. Phoebe fled to her bedroom tearfully. A door slammed. Mulder stood beside the front door with one hand braced on the wall. Will dragged his hand across his face, wiping away blood from his nose.

 

"Has she done that before?" Mulder tapped the wall with his fist.

 

Will looked down. "She's having a bad morning. She hasn't slept. She and Mitchell had a row last night."

 

Mulder started to ask who Mitchell was, but realized he didn't give a damn. "This place looks like a whorehouse burped," he muttered. "Go put on a decent shirt and we'll send for the rest of your things later."

 

"I'm not coming back?"

 

"No." The word had a dull finality to it, like a vault door swung shut. 

 

It took Will a long time to change clothes, but the boy emerged in a stylish but sedate gray shirt with a darker gray collar. Mulder had an identical shirt. Or used to. Either Dana hit a two-for-one-sale at Saks, or Will had laid claim to Mulder’s new shirt.

 

Neither William nor Mulder spoke in the elevator. In the lobby, Mulder said things like, "There's no excuse for her hitting you," and "I'm sorry," which Will answered with uncomfortable shrugs and nods.

 

They stood on the sidewalk beside Park Avenue doing nothing for several minutes before William asked if they would catch a bus to Coney Island.

 

"We double-parked,” Mulder explained. “Dana's circling the block."

 

"I didn't know Dana could drive."

 

"Of course, Dana can drive." Mulder spotted the black Chrysler convertible turning the corner and willed it to hurry.

 

Dana had no place to park, so Mulder and Will waded between taxis as she waited for the light to change, and chose the back seat so they had leg room during the long drive. Dana watched them in the rear-view mirror with her eyes hidden behind black sunglasses. 

 

Mulder's coffee cup was fogging the windshield. She turned to hand it to him; his fingers covered hers before she let go. It was a beautiful morning and they'd left the top down, but Emily had the hood of her jacket up and Dana tied a scarf around her own head against the cool air. Before she turned back, Mulder trailed two fingers down her jaw, one on her skin and one on the thin silk fabric.

 

“She hit him?” Dana mouthed into the rear-view mirror.

 

Mulder nodded.

 

Will slouched down as if attempting to sink into the car’s upholstery and answered Emily's excited chattering in glib monosyllables.

 

Dana opened the glove box and handed a paper napkin over the front seat. "Your nose is bleeding, Will. Mulder, do you have a handkerchief? Pinch your nose and tilt your head back until the bleeding stops. Help him, Mulder."

 

"I am. I'm helping him."

 

An expert nose-bleeder, Emily turned around and knelt to watch, but Dana made her sit back down as traffic moved again.  

 

*~*~*~*

 

They made it to Aiello's before all the blueberries for the blueberry pancakes were gone. They went to Wax World and the Arcade, and on the Cyclone and the Parachute Jump and the Carousel. They covered The Boardwalk, The Bowery, and Surf Avenue with Em sitting on Mulder's and then Will's shoulders. They met a geek, a tattooed lady, a bearded lady, and a dog-faced boy at the sideshow and, via some sleight of hand, Emily was completely convinced her mother ate a bug. Nathan's hotdogs cost a nickel each, so Mulder could give himself near-lethal heartburn for a quarter. Will soothed his morning trauma by consuming any food served on a stick and collecting female admirers. Dana said she was still full from her bug.   

 

As Dana returned from the bathhouse in a white, halter-top suit with her hand in Emily's, Mulder told her, "I sent Will to change so he could take Emily in, but he got lost. I thought you weren’t swimming today." A few straying husbands followed Dana down the beach but looked crushed as they saw Mulder. Pretending he thought they were fans instead of competition, Mulder waved enthusiastically. The men waved back, looking constipated.

 

"William's made a new friend. I saw him with her near the Boardwalk. He said to tell you they’re studying."

 

"Studying what? Full-body Braille?" Mulder sighed resignedly, put down his book, and started to get up. "I'll go round up Don Juan. Try to stall the Indian Mermaid Girl for a few minutes." 

 

Emily eyed him unhappily from under the brim of her sun hat. A streak of zinc oxide painted her nose and two stripes decorated each cheek. Like any woman with new clothes, she'd been practicing wearing her new turquoise two-piece in the bathtub for a week, but the sun block cream must have caused disagreement between Emily and her mother.         

 

"No, I'll take her in,” Dana said. “It's fine. Read your book."  

 

"But I thought-” he said awkwardly.

 

"Mulder, it's fine," Dana insisted as Emily went for more water for the moat of the elaborate sandcastle she and Mulder had been building. The idea of swimming appeared forgotten.

 

At the urging of their fathers, two junior high-aged boys approached for autographs and to ask the usual questions about Mulder’s shoulder while he signed their slips of paper. "No, I'm through playing," Mulder said for the fiftieth time that day. He politely refused to take off his shirt to let them see the scars. Contrary to popular belief, his life wasn't a display case for their amusement.

 

After the boys left, Mulder filled and turned over his bucket, completing the north tower of the inner castle wall. He looked up at Dana again, squinting his eyes at in the bright sun. "You're late."

 

"Mulder-"

 

"Scully?"

 

Not wanting to share their conversation with the neighboring beach-going baseball fans, Dana knelt in the sand beside him and answered quietly, "One day is not 'late.'"

 

"Four days. Uncle Arthur is late this month."

 

"You keep track? Uncle Arthur?” she said incredulously. “How old are you?"

 

Mulder grinned as a nice orange glow warmed his stomach. "Uncle Arthur comes to visit with Aunt Flo. I got a million of them. Are you decorated with red roses? Flying the scarlet flag? I can euphemize in other languages: Tante Rosa kommt?  Or 'Les Anglais ont debarque.' Kibalti? Kritische tagen? Asse star, che a xe cussi."

 

She stared at him in disbelief and shook her head. "You're incorrigible. And weird. Fine: four days. It's a fluke."  

 

"You're late," he repeated. 

 

The center edge of her upper lip passed between her teeth. "Mulder," she said seriously, "I told you, it won't happen. There was too much uterine trauma. The doctor said there was injury to my cervix and scarring of the endometrial lining and fallopian tubes."

 

"Which part's your endometrial?"

 

"The lining of the uterus. The womb. I know I caught you perusing my anatomy textbook, and I’m pretty sure you’re behind the disappearance of my old ‘Nurse’s Handbook of Gynecology and Obstetrics.’"

 

The orange glow in his abdomen dissipated, but he quipped, "I only paid attention to the parts I can reach with my tongue."

 

She blushed like she was supposed to, laughed like she was supposed to, and helped build the sandcastle as though them having - or not having - another baby meant nothing. He felt a momentary sense of confusion from Dana, and fear. He heard her count the days inside her mind, and realize Mulder was correct. He saw a blur of images: the times they’d made love in the last month, all remembered from Dana’s perspective. He felt another wave of fear but couldn’t untangle her thoughts to know if she feared being pregnant, or disappointing him, or feared for herself. Or all three.

 

"We have Will and Emily," Dana said a moment later. "We're getting married in a few weeks. I thought you were happy."

 

"I am happy."

 

"We could adopt," she said hesitantly.

 

"We are adopting," he countered. "I'm adopting Emily."

 

Another minute passed before she said, "You haven't mentioned another baby in months.”

 

Mulder didn’t answer. 

 

“I can see another doctor, get a second opinion,” she offered. “Maybe there's something they can do. We can try, but I don't think it's going to happen."

 

"Why are you late?" he asked, and this time he didn't get an answer. Mulder added another level to the castle walls before he spoke again. "If it would happen, though - hypothetically - I don't want you in danger, and I'm not sure I could protect you. I'm not even sure who I'd be protecting you from."

 

She glanced up from her beach architecture. His reflection in her sunglasses looked uncomfortable.

 

He looked away. "If it would happen," he said, tamping down his new bucket of sand. "I'm not furthering some agenda or endangering you. If I can't keep you safe, I'd rather it didn't happen at all. Ever."

 

Emily returned lugging a plastic bucket. The seawater sloshed over the sides and onto her little canvas shoes.  

 

"It won't happen," Dana answered.

 

Mulder heard Dana’s jumbled, panicked thoughts enough to know she lied. He felt her uncertainty and fear, but Dana emptied the bucket into moat and calmly headed to the shore for a refill.       

 

Will reappeared carrying a soda, wearing swim trunks, and looking like Trouble with a capital T waiting for a horizontal surface to happen on. The busty brunette with him should hold a sign saying 'Easy.'

 

Contrary to what Frohike claimed, Mulder understood Will wasn't a child anymore. Mulder didn't mind Will dating nice girls, so long as Will behaved himself. Unfortunately, Mulder’s son was a magnet for a teenage version of Phoebe, and hell-bent on getting loved one way or the other. Mulder could lecture all he liked - including, this afternoon, a private and frank discussion about responsibilities and prophylactics - but William seemed oblivious all the sport wasn't - well, sport. The girls Will liked weren’t going to object, and Mulder's warnings fell on deaf ears.

 

Mulder sighed and reached for the plastic shovel. Though his hand remained an inch away, the handle slid toward him across the sand.

 

Stop it, he told the little shovel. Luckily, no one had seen.

 

"Mulder, can I bury you?" Emily asked, bored with the sandcastle and reaching the four-in-the-afternoon, day-at-the-beach stage where most of her energy went toward fighting a nap. He felt her tiredness the same as he would in his own body; he hadn't noticed being able to do that before.

 

"Mulder?" Emily repeated. "Can I bury you in the sand?"

 

"Only if you do it head-first," Mulder agreed as he watched Dana walk away.

 

*~*~*~*

 

End: A Moment In the Sun, part V

 

Begin: A Moment in the Sun: Part VI

 

*~*~*~*

 

“How is he?” Mulder had to yell over the engine and the din of the fans greeting the other players at the train station. The Yankees’ fans didn’t notice Mulder; they probably thought he carried the luggage. The locomotive died with a sigh, and Mulder could hear better inside the phone booth. "How is he?" Mulder repeated. “How's my baby boy?"

 

"I'm fine, thank you for asking, Fox," Phoebe answered, sounding tired and irritable. In New York, Phoebe would be in the telephone booth in front of the drug store, around the corner from their apartment. In the background, Mulder heard Will whimpering and the traffic slogging past.

 

"I meant you too, honey. How's everything?"

 

"Where are you?"

 

"Detroit. The train arrived late, and we have a game in a few hours. Lou Gehrig's not going to play, so I'm in the line-up. I'm batting. Hitting," he clarified for her. “I get a turn at trying to hit the baseball.”

 

Someone tapped on the door of the phone booth. Mulder turned, coming face to face with Lefty Gomez through the smudgy glass. Lefty Gomez wanted to use the telephone. The players seemed friendly, but Mulder still mentally addressed his teammates using both their first and last names. Someone wake Bill Dickey; it's time for practice. Joe Gordon was next in line to use the john. Lou Gehrig wasn't batting today; he didn’t feel well. These were the New York Yankees, for God's sake, and Mulder felt like a kid who got on their bus by mistake while trying to get to his aunt's house in Normal, Illinois.

 

"Where is Detroit?" Phoebe asked.

 

"A long way from home. Listen, someone else wants the telephone. Does William need anything?"

 

"He needs the rent paid, Fox."  

 

"What happened to the money I sent?" They weren't rolling in money, but the PONY league paid him. "What did you do with it?"

 

"What do you think I did with it? You said to pay the bills and buy what we needed, so I did. I paid the account at the grocery store and the chemist, and the overdue rent from March and April. The doctor, groceries, the electric bill," Phoebe listed. "The baby can't wear rags. He has to have milk. He has to eat."

 

Mulder pushed his eyebrows together, puzzled at her math. He wired $100 a week ago. Even after she paid everything they owed, Phoebe should still have plenty of rent and housekeeping money. "Honey, how can you not have any money?"

 

"Do you want me to look under the bed and see if there's money hiding there?" she answered angrily. "There's no money in my pocketbook and the landlord is demanding this month's rent. You said playing baseball was a good job, Fox. You said you signed a big contract."

 

"It is and I did, but you can’t spend every cent I make the second I make it. You still have to budget." Mulder looked around the cramped wooden telephone booth like he might find an answer. He had less than $10 in his pocket - not even enough to cover the rent - and he had to eat for the next week, too. "You'll have to stall the landlord. I won't get a big paycheck for another week. I don't think I can get an advance."

 

He couldn't; he'd asked. If he hit .300 for the season, they'd be glad to give Mulder an advance and anything else he liked. While Mulder remained a rookie, he better be glad they were paying him at all.

 

"The landlord said he's going to evict us from the flat if the rent isn’t paid by Friday," Phoebe informed him.

 

"You're the one who spent all the money. Stall him," Mulder repeated.

 

"Stall him how?" she demanded. "What is it you want me to do? Fuck him?"

 

He exhaled. "Jesus Christ, Phoebs. No, that's not what I want you to do."

 

"You aren't here. You're never here, and I can't understand what anyone's saying. There's no money. You aren't cold, and you aren't exhausted, and you didn't have people in the next flat pounding on the wall because the baby cried all night. You're off playing some silly game in Detroit, wherever the bloody hell Detroit is. What is it you want me to do, Fox?"

 

"I don't know," he said honestly. "Honey, it's May; you aren't cold." He got an icy silence. "The landlord isn't going to evict us over the rent being a few weeks late. It's been two months late, before. Tell him to hold his horses: Dem Hahn der zu fruh kraht, dreht man den Hals um."

 

"Oh, I can't remember that," she responded miserably. Mulder heard the baby fussing again.

 

"Then tell him to piss off, and I'll deal with him. Say your husband handles the money, and he's out of town. Put whatever you and Will need on the account at the store, try to sleep when the baby sleeps like the doctor told you, and hold down the fort for a little longer."

 

"I need you to come home, Fox." She sounded as if she tried not to cry. "I can't do this."

 

"I can't come home." He turned his back to Lefty Gomez and the rest of the team, and he slouched over the phone. "Phoebs, it's okay. Calm down. You're tired."

 

"He said he's going to evict us," she repeated as if he hadn't spoken, and sniffed. "I can't..." she started hoarsely, and started to sob along with the baby.

 

The sound made Mulder’s chest hurt.

 

"It'll be okay. Pay him, then. I'll wire the money today, and I'll call tomorrow at ten to make sure you got it."

 

He heard another sniff. "Okay. You'll wire the money?"

 

"I will. Give my baby boy a kiss for me."

 

"I'm fine. Thank you for asking, Fox," she said in a rough, weary voice.

 

"Phoebs... You get an entirely different kind of kiss," he said. "We both have to wait a few weeks, though."

 

He heard the crackle of static over the long-distance line. She'd hung up. Mulder pushed the cradle down to end the connection and asked the operator to put a call through to his parents' number in Boston, fishing the last of the change out of his pocket.

 

"Rosa, it's Fox," he told the maid who answered. "I need to talk to my mother, please."

 

"She can't come to the phone, Mr. Fox," the woman responded, and asked softly. "How are you? How that baby boy?"

 

"He's growing like a weed. Is my mother there, Rosa?"

 

"She and Mr. Mulder, they both here. She not gonna be able to come to the phone no more, Mr. Fox."   

 

"Did my father find out she talked to me?" There was silence on the other end of the line. "Do you think he'll talk to me, Rosa? I don't want to get you in trouble, but it's important. Do you think he'll come to the phone?"

 

"No, I don't think so, Mr. Fox." She paused. "You take care of yourself and that baby, though."

 

Mulder opened the folding door of the phone booth and bent down pick up the suitcase he'd dropped. He nodded politely at Lefty Gomez.

 

Across the street from the train station, a sign glowed in a dingy window, a beacon for sure things and last chances.

 

The man behind the counter of the pawnshop asked, "You got a kid, mister?" as Mulder slipped off his heavy wedding ring. Mulder weighed it in his hand. Gold was gold, but he thought a family man might get a better deal. "How old?"

 

Providing the team didn't fire Mulder after his first game, the Yankees played Detroit again in a month. He'd get the ring out of hock then. He didn’t know how he'd explain coming home without his wedding band, but he'd think of something before he had to face Phoebe.

 

"He's three, almost four." Mulder laid the ring on the counter. "Months. Three, almost four months."

 

*~*~*~*

 

They must be back in Manhattan. The car hit a pothole large enough to swallow a Volkswagen, jarring Mulder awake and reminding him where those four chilidogs with extra onions had gone.

 

A damp beach towel was wadded under his cheek, but otherwise the back seat made a nice, if cramped, bed. Raising his head, Mulder saw Em still asleep on Will's lap in the front seat with her new cat clutched tight.

 

They found 'Kitten' prowling the parking lot as they left Coney Island, and Emily insisted they keep it. The cat seemed friendly, so they agreed, but 'Kitten' was a misnomer for the grizzled old tabby. He peeked out over the collar of Mulder's jacket, which covered Emily, surveying his new family with his one good eye. Privately, Mulder thought the animal on its last legs, but Emily was in love. Like her mother, she took in strays.

 

The sun left Mulder and Will bronzed and drowsy, but Dana and Emily's fair skin had suffered despite the sunscreen and hats and beach umbrella. Will had one arm around Emily and the other hanging out the window, talking with Dana as she drove. 

 

"You put zucchini in it?" Will said. "That sounds horrid."

 

"It's like the carrots in carrot cake; you grate them fine and you can't taste them," Dana responded. "You can add walnuts or raisins or applesauce, and some people put in carrots or pears or pineapple.

 

"Carrots should be eaten with peas. Peas and carrots. Zucchini shouldn't be eaten at all. It's bread? How is it bread?"

 

Mulder smiled, shifted, and settled back down to his nap. 

 

William would die if he knew anyone besides Dana heard him. Mulder was 'Daddy-O', but Dana filled a big sister, intermediary, confidante role in his son's life. If Will had a secret - and he had a file drawer full of them - Dana knew it before Mulder.

 

"It's a dark, moist cake baked in a loaf pan. Your father likes it. I don't think he realizes it has nutrition in it."

 

"Dad's keen on about anything you do," Will said lightly, and turned to look out the open window. He raised his hand, opening his fingers so the cool air caressed them. "Did he tell you what happened this morning?"

 

"Yes."

 

"She's not like that, not usually. I was being disrespectful. Mother- Mother loves Dad as much as she hates him, and every time she looks at me and sees him, she hates me. When she sees him happy with you, she hates me even more."

 

Mulder felt how badly Dana wanted to say ‘She doesn't hate you, Will’ but she didn't. "Do you really think she feels that way?" she asked instead.

 

Will hesitated. Poor kid; it couldn't be easy going through life as a helping verb. "No. She doesn't hate me. I don't think she even notices me most of the time. When she does, I remind her of a profitable mistake she made about seventeen years ago."

 

"You're not a mistake, and you’re not your father. You’re her son." A hint of anger crept into her voice. “A mother doesn’t have to love where a child came from to love a child.”

 

"Clearly, she does. She’s not you."

 

Dana didn’t answer.

 

"I'm sorry." He apologized meekly. "I shouldn't have said that. Dad- Dad told me. About Emily's father. He'd-" The seat squeaked as Will shifted. "He did something he shouldn't have."

 

Mulder closed his eyes as Dana glanced in the rear-view mirror.

 

"Dana-" The seat squeaked again. "He told me because I asked. I didn't tell anyone. I won't. Dad thinks you were brave to keep her. So do I."

     

The car slowed and made a gentle right turn.

 

"Last year, I didn't mean what I said about Mother stopping by Dad’s flat. It wasn't true; not since I was little. I shouldn't have called you names. My mother told me something... And I was upset. I didn't mean that, either."

 

Mulder didn’t know Will meant, but Dana said, "I know."

 

Will resettled Emily on his lap and draped his arm out the window again. As Mulder looked up, the skyscrapers whizzed past like giants peering down at the populace, keeping watch as the lazy sun slid into the dark formality of evening.

 

"I wasn't brave, Will," Dana said after a few minutes. "When Emily came. I was a few years older than you are. There's nothing romantic about having a baby before you want one. I was alone and terrified. I was lucky I'd finished college; it meant being away from her, but I go to work and earn enough money to take care of her. Most girls aren't so lucky. They give up their babies and lie for the rest of their lives. Several of my friends in high school and college had to get married, sometimes to men they didn't love-"

 

"That doesn't work out well in the end," Will supplied knowingly.

 

"No, not usually. I knew two girls in the Army who tried to abort their babies and died. Another nurse who hung herself. I can't imagine how any man could say he cared about a woman and yet risk putting her in that situation. It's not just her reputation at stake - sometimes it's her life. Love is wonderful, but it's not fun and games. All those emotions, all those instincts - figuring out the right thing to do and doing it - I think that's the hardest thing in the world."

 

"That's what Dad said."

 

"He does have some firsthand experience."

 

The front seat stayed quiet for several blocks.

 

“My dad loved you,” William said eventually. “That winter - he loved you, and he wanted to marry you. But you disappeared.”

 

“That winter, I loved him. I wanted to marry him,” Dana answered softly. “I did then, and I do now.”

 

Mulder heard Will form the question inside his head, but the boy didn’t ask it. Instead, William watched the traffic lights and passing cars.

 

"Do you mind if I live with you?" Will asked after a while, and promised, "I won't be any more trouble."

 

"Do I mind? Of course, I don't mind; that's like asking Mulder if he minds if Emily lives with us. He's going to find a bigger place next week."

 

"We're going to need a house bigger than the one he has?"

  

Will was fishing for information, but Dana answered, "Mulder is going to stay in New York with you, and once this semester is over, Emily and I are moving back here as well. Emily's doctors are here. Your mother is here. He's going to find a bigger place in New York so you can stay at Packer. There's no sense in you changing schools. You have one more year."

 

"You set a date for the wedding?"

 

"I'm sure he wants to talk to you himself."

 

"I heard him talking to Mother this morning. What about your school? Dad doesn’t like it, but he won’t make you quit."

 

"I'll finish this semester, take some time off, and go back when I can. I'm going to stay home with Emily." 

 

"And with the baby?" There was another uncomfortable pause, some throat clearing, and Will added, "Mother asked why you were getting married. That's what started the row in her flat this morning."

 

"That's not why we're getting married," Dana answered almost too softly for Mulder to hear.

 

"Dad said he wanted a little girl."   

 

"He said that to your mother?"

 

"No. This morning, he didn't answer Mother. He said it last year in hospital.” Will paused. “He'd had a lot of drugs."

 

Mulder leaned forward and slid his hand between the driver's seat and the car door, caressing her hipbone as she drove. Leaving one hand on the steering wheel, she laced her fingers through his and glanced in the rear view mirror. She still wore sunglasses, so he couldn't see her eyes, but he saw his reflection in the lenses.

 

"If there is a baby coming - hypothetically - and it was another girl, Daddy-O and I would be outnumbered," Will postulated. "So my vote is for a boy."

 

"Will..." Dana started gently.

 

"These are the colonies; I do get a vote," his son insisted. "I... I don't want my Dad to get hurt again."

 

"Neither do I," she assured him. "I don't want either of you to get hurt again."

 

She let go of Mulder’s hand. The car stopped. The transmission shifted into reverse and she backed into a parking space. "Mulder, are you awake back there?"

 

Mulder sat up and looked around. He tried to figure out why she’d parked in front of Phoebe's apartment building instead of The Plaza.  

 

"Will needs to get his book bag. It has his report in it."

 

"It's due tomorrow." His son twisted sideways in the front seat. "I rang from the beach and Mother didn't answer. I don't think she's here."

 

"You and that book bag." Mulder yawned and rubbed the towel indention on his cheek. "Do you want me to go with you?"

 

Dana had a smug tilt to her chin, indicating that was her plan all along. Mulder curled his lip at her like the Elvis kid everyone was crazy over. He’d lived a few productive years on this Earth without Dana Scully planning his every move.  

 

"All I need is my rucksack and some clothes."

 

"Why can't you wear mine?" Mulder wanted to do this as quickly as possible.  

 

Mulder and Dana had no time for dinner before the opera, and they'd be late for the curtain if they didn't hurry. Mulder liked to get to the box early so he could be sound asleep on Dana's shoulder fifteen minutes into the first act.

 

Will smirked and silently outlined a square in the air with his index fingers. "I'm not wearing a pair of shorts with 'Dad' written in them."

 

"Dana writes 'Mulder' in the new ones." Though Mulder still boxer shorts and T-shirts with 'Dad' written in them from the days Will labeled them 'Dad' and 'Mine'.

 

As they got out of the car, Will asked uncertainly, "Those clothes are yours? I thought the cleaners started writing my last name in everything."

 

"Are you the reason my shorts and undershirts keep disappearing? I told Dana we have underwear trolls living behind our dryer, pilfering from the laundry basket. I was ready to have Agent Dales investigate The Plaza's laundry service for alien textile abductions. Your clothes say 'Will,' Will."

 

"I knew that. But I thought..." Will looked guilty and discomforted.

 

"Was that my new gray shirt you wore this morning?"

 

The guilty, discomforted expression continued.

 

"I'm aware of a pair of boxers with 'Mommy' written in them. You're clear on those, right?" Mulder teased.

 

"That's perverse." Will pushed the button to call for the elevator.

 

Mulder shrugged. "They're the ones with the balls in them."

 

His son's stunned expression kept Mulder amused in the elevator, and he still grinned as Will unlocked the apartment door.

 

"I knew you left them somewhere," Will responded, taking three minutes to think up something witty. Mulder swatted him on the back of the head and tousled Will's picture-perfect hair. "Hey, stop it. What are yo-"

 

Will wound down like an old phonograph and came to a halt. Phoebe slept on the sofa, still in her silk robe from this morning and showing more leg than a teenage boy needed to come home to. 

 

"She's here," Will whispered, demonstrating an amazing grasp of the obvious.

 

"So am I. Go get what you need." Mulder closed the front door quietly.

 

While Will retrieved his book bag and clothing from his bedroom, Mulder got the blanket off Phoebe's bed to cover her. He should let her be cold, but old habits die hard. Once an albatross necklace, always an albatross necklace. 

 

As he draped the blanket over her, Mulder noticed a prescription bottle on the rug and, to his growing discomfort, a half-empty bottle of vodka. "Phoebe, are you okay?" he asked tiredly, jostling her. "Phoebs?"             

 

She didn't respond. Mulder picked up the prescription bottle. He held it at arm’s length and squinted at the typed label. She had the prescription filled three days ago, and no pills rattled inside the glass bottle. He didn't know what Miltown was, but he bet Phoebe shouldn’t take all of it in three days.

 

Throwing open a living room window, Mulder yelled for Dana to come up. He saw her hurry out of the driver's seat and pick up Emily.

 

He returned to Phoebe and checked for a pulse; he found one. She breathed, but in short, shallow pants. "Don't you dare do this to Will!" Mulder ordered, and shook her shoulders.

 

"Is Mother okay?" Will asked from the hallway.

 

"What are these?" Mulder held up the prescription bottle.

 

"Nothing. She needs coffee and she'll wake up."

 

"What is it?" he barked.

 

"Tranquilizers; nerve pills." 

 

"How many does she usually take?"

 

"The doctor said to take one if she can't sleep," his son answered without answering.

 

"William, now! This isn't a game!"

 

"She's not to take more than four a day,” William admitted. “If she does, it makes her sleepy."

 

"What's an overdose?"

 

"Twenty-four hundred milligrams. Six pills." 

 

"Shit," Mulder said. He stood helplessly with his hands on his hips as he waited for Dana.

 

"She won't wake up," Mulder told Dana as she came in. She handed Emily off to Will and bent over Phoebe. "She took Miltown, 400 milligram tablets. There were two-dozen pills in this bottle three days ago, and it's empty. And vodka. The bottle’s half-empty."

 

Dana Scully, meet Phoebe Mulder; Phoebe: Dana.  

 

"Put her on the floor, flat," Dana ordered. Mulder shoved the coffee table out of the way and slid his arms under Phoebe’s knees and shoulders. He eased her off the sofa. Dana steadied her head, which lolled drunkenly. "Will, call for an ambulance." 

 

"She needs coffee and she'll wake up," Will said again, as he held Emily.

 

"Call for an ambulance!" Dana commanded. "Now. Do it now!"

 

*~*~*~*

 

The doctor kept tapping his pen on his clipboard in a way indicating he was in charge of many important crazy people and in a hurry to get to them. "We'll keep her under observation for a few days, Mr. Mulder,” the doctor explained, “and relocate her to a residential facility for long-term treatment.”

 

"You mean you'll commit her," Mulder said tiredly. He leaned against the cool cinderblock wall of the long, windowless hospital corridor. "You'll put her in a sanitarium. I don’t know if she was trying to commit suicide."

 

"Mr. Mulder, your wife swallowed four times the number of tranquilizers needed to overdose. That's twenty-four pills. She drank alcohol so she wouldn't vomit. What do you think she was trying to do?"

 

"I don't know," Mulder mumbled. "I don't."

 

"Of course, you don't. We're the professionals. We'll take good care of your wife. Don't worry. Also, I wanted to tell you, I'm a big fan of yours. Nobody smacked those balls like you did."  

 

Mulder had a thousand responses, but none worth the effort. "Is she awake?"

 

"She's groggy, but you can see her for a bit."

 

Mulder stared at the wooden door for several seconds before he pushed it open and stepped into the room. He felt tired. Tired of her, tired of this game. He wished he had an eraser so he could remove her from the picture and leave Will, but life didn't work that way.  

 

“Phoebs?”

 

"Fox?" she said softly and turned her head to him. Her pretty brown eyes looked glassy and unfocused. In a psychiatric ward, and on a suicide watch, straps around her wrist tied her to the sides of the bed so she couldn’t hurt herself. The nurses dressed her in a thin white gown that hit mid-thigh and showed some of the best legs in Manhattan and would have been sexy if it wasn't so pitiful.

 

"Some day, huh?" Mulder responded.

 

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

 

"I know. Will’s upset. He saw you, but- I told him you’d be okay. I’ll call him in a minute. They won’t let him see you, so he’s with Dana."

 

"I didn't know you'd want him," Her words blended together the way Dana folded sugar into meringue. "Didn't know you'd want to get married."

 

Mulder rolled his head from side to side, trying to make sense of what she said. "Is that why you did this? Phoebe, we haven't been married in a decade. Dana's great with Will. Why do you care if I marry her?"

 

"Nice bloke: sweet, shy, rich. Lonely. But you wouldn't walk away, Fox. Supposed to walk away- Stupid Yankee. Wasn't supposed to fall pregnant, but I could've fixed that."

 

"Phoebe, I don't understand."

 

His words didn't even seem to register in her brain. "So nice. Didn't want to be married, but- Nice. So, marry the rich chump," she rambled, still slurring her words. She looked at him. "You didn’t want me. Just him." Phoebe turned her face away from Mulder and back to look at the wall. "Just him."

 

In the insanely white hospital room, Mulder’s watch ticked loudly as seconds and minutes passed. Until he was sure she slept, Mulder stood so still he felt his pulse throbbing in his palms and the air passing over his lips as he breathed. He backed out of the room, blindly feeling his way. He slipped through the doorway as effortlessly as fog, and pulled the door closed. The latch clicked into place.   

 

"Are you all right, Mr. Mulder?" a young nurse asked when he walked into her.

 

"No." 

 

No, he did not feel all right. 'All Right, Mulder' was a town outside of Normal, Illinois. He'd missed that bus a long time ago because of this woman. At twenty-three, Mulder got drunk and bought a ticket to Hell, Michigan. He never could read a map, and his layover in Intercourse, Pennsylvania screwed up his sense of direction for too many years.

 

Dana had the car. If he got lost, he could call her to come get him.      

 

"Sit down." The little nurse dragged a chair into the hallway. "Your wife is going to be fine. You don't need to worry. Sometimes it's scary seeing her, but she'll get better. Sit down, Mr. Mulder. Your wife will feel much better tomorrow."

 

Mulder sat. Good dog, Mulder. Pat, pat.

 

"She's not my wife. My wife is with the children. They were upset and Dana took them home. She'll be back at seven," Mulder told Miss Sunshine from Happyland, Oklahoma. "Emily has to see the doctor. She's sick."

 

"Then who is that?" She pointed at the closed door on the other side of the corridor with a perfectly filed oval fingernail. “Why are you here?”

 

He exhaled and shook his head from side to side. "I have no idea."

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder hadn’t eaten lunch in a while, but he’d saved the three dollars: the midwife’s fee. That amount covered delivering a baby – regardless of how long it took to arrive. 

 

He stayed in a corner of their one-room apartment, giving Phoebe privacy. He still had to translate for the German midwife, though. The midwife spoke Low rather than High German and used euphemisms Mulder didn't know. He felt frightened and frustrated, and Phoebe was frightened and in pain, and the winter hours stretched into an eternal night.

 

The snowstorm rattled the windowpanes. Cold seeped in through the walls.

 

The midwife confirmed Phoebe was in labor on Sunday morning, but said the baby wouldn’t come soon. The midwife returned several times during the day, and finally told Mulder to come across the street and get her once the pains were five minutes apart. Now, with Mulder translating, she told Phoebe to rest, which seemed a futile mission.  

 

As Phoebe tried to sleep, Mulder put his head down on the kitchen table and dozed fitfully. How Mulder would provide for this baby, he had no idea, but he'd deal with that once it was born.

 

There were no jobs. No positions at Bellevue or the jails or private asylums or schools. Mulder couldn't find work teaching or researching or even strong-arming criminals or insane people. Banks, stores, warehouses, factories, offices, restaurants: all had ‘Not Hiring’ signs in the window. There weren't just no white-collar jobs or jobs he was qualified to do - there were no jobs at all. For any work, even hard labor, a hundred desperate men stood in line ahead of Mulder.

 

For sixty hours of loading, driving, and unloading freight at the dock, Mulder brought home fifteen dollars a week. One-fourth of his pay went to rent but rent included the light bill. Theoretically, rent also included heat. A sweater cost $3, a skirt, $2, a blanket $6. A working man's lunch was twenty-five cents, but bread sold for ten cents a loaf, and cold cuts a quarter a pound. A dozen eggs cost a quarter, and a quart of milk a dime. It didn't help neither Mulder nor Phoebe could cook; a burnt dinner wasn't just a disappointment - it disintegrated into a yelling match about wasting money they didn't have. A washing machine, a phone, and a radio they lived without, and the icebox they bought used. They could see a matinee movie for fifty cents and, for a big afternoon out, take the subway to and from the theater for another twenty cents. Never before in Mulder’s life had he kept track of the change in his pockets in order to eat. Now, he learned about breadlines and soup kitchens and a world he hadn't known existed.

 

Six months ago, the Depression in the States was something he'd read about in the papers rather than been affected by. He and Phoebe could return to England - see if they could stay with Phoebe's mother in London - but Adolph Hitler kept pressing into Austria and Czechoslovakia, Mussolini was after Ethiopia, and Europe teetered on the brink of war. Britain had three kings in the space of a year, and the new fellow didn’t inspire confidence. Mulder knew Phoebe was unhappy and homesick, but it seemed smarter to keep starving and freezing in the States than buy a ticket to a war zone.

 

Mulder felt a hand on his shoulder. He opened his eyes to see Phoebe looking down at him. Her other hand pressed against the small of her back.

 

In the dim room, she looked like the intersection of exhausted, terrified, and miserable. Mulder knew she hated it - the cold, the immigrant neighborhood, living on a shoestring budget, and being married to a man who worked all the time. He lived in the same cold apartment, ate the same food day after day, and had a pregnant wife he seldom saw. The baby was coming, though. The baby would make everything okay.

 

"Almost four. Time to go to work, Fox," she reminded him. Her Cockney accent reminded him of burly men drinking in cramped pubs or selling meat pies. Women pushing carts of vegetables down cobblestone streets or sweeping sidewalks. Simple people doing simple things.

 

Mulder nodded tiredly. "How are you feeling?"

 

"Better. The pains have stopped."

 

He wrinkled his forehead. "When?"

 

"An hour ago. Maybe two hours."

 

"Phoebs, labor isn't supposed to stop, is it?"

 

She shook her head. Either she didn't know or didn't care. She lit a fire under the kettle. When she turned around again, Mulder rested his forehead against her belly. She put her hand on top of his head.

 

"You could use a haircut."

 

He sighed. "We could use a lot of things."

 

Mulder shifted his head as she toyed with his hair. He missed her touching him. Sex was free and warm, and one thing they didn't fight about. That form of recreation was off the table lately, obviously. Lately, Mulder told himself that lack caused the problem with their marriage - not that they didn't love each other or have anything in common except the child growing inside her.

 

The alarm clock across the room went off, startling him. He stood up, stretching, as Phoebe waddled over to turn off the alarm.

 

He opened the apartment door as the midwife was about to knock. After translating briefly, Mulder went to the bathroom at the end of the hall while the midwife examined Phoebe again. Like every morning, he washed off, brushed his teeth, and as he shaved, looked at his reflection in the chipped mirror and wondered how in the hell he got here.

 

Mulder returned to find Phoebe sitting on the bed and the midwife standing in the corner that passed for a kitchen. Both women talked loudly but without understanding each other. Frustrated, the midwife took Mulder by the sleeve, talking a mile a minute and gesturing emphatically to Phoebe.

 

"Is the baby moving?" Mulder translated. "She wants to know what time the baby last moved?"

 

"Midnight. Last night. Before the pains stopped."

 

He repeated that in German, and the midwife looked unhappy. His heart beat faster.

 

Mulder nodded as the midwife explained her concerns, but he had to ask her to repeat herself several times. Before yesterday, Mulder hadn’t known the German words for labor pains or Caesarian section or womb, for that matter. Phoebe demanded Mulder tell her what the midwife was saying. Both women started talking over each other until Phoebe clutched her belly and neared hysterical.

 

"We're going to a hospital," Mulder told Phoebe, barking at her more than he intended. He added in a softer voice, "It's okay, but she says the baby should come in a hospital."

 

That wasn't what the midwife said. The midwife said if the baby didn’t come soon, Phoebe or the baby or both could die.

 

Mulder had no money to have a doctor come, let alone go to a hospital.

 

He wondered if he could get his three dollars back from the midwife.

 

He should be at Oxford finishing his dissertation and getting ready to graduate and go to work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

 

This was not happening.

 

"She wants us to go now," Mulder said with his voice carefully even.

 

"Okay." Phoebe sat on the edge of their bed. She struggled to her feet. "Okay, Fox."

 

Her coat didn't close in front, so Mulder put on a thick sweater, gloves, and a hat, and had Phoebe wear his winter coat. He turned the kettle off, locked the door. It was slow going down the three flights of steps, and then to the front of the apartment building. They could wait for the streetcar all they wanted, but it wouldn't run for another hour.

 

As they walked to the subway station, a taxicab slowed, and stopped on the dark, snow-covered street. The window rolled down, and the driver told them in Hebrew to get in. Since Phoebe couldn't understand, Mulder answered honestly, they couldn't afford a taxicab to the hospital. The man got out, opened the back door of his taxi and, standing ankle-deep in the snow, said, "Bechiman."

 

Free.

 

A decade later, by chance, the same old Jewish taxi driver would pick up Mulder and Will after an afternoon monster movie downtown. That cab ride cost about a dollar, and Mulder handed the man a $99 tip as they got out at The Plaza.

 

In the warm taxicab, Phoebe put Mulder’s hand on her belly so he felt a little kick.

 

"I think that's a good thing," he assured her. "Any pains?"

 

"No," she answered nervously. "What does that mean?

 

"I don't know, but it's going to be okay."

 

She nodded silently, trusting him.

 

He realized, at that moment, she had no choice but to trust him. The weight of the responsibility made him shiver more than the cold.

 

Once the hospital nurses took care of Phoebe, Mulder got his winter coat back and caught the subway to work, arriving an hour late and terrified he would get fired. He couldn't recall much about the day - which ship they unloaded or where the deliveries went, but he remembered turning down his boss's offer to work late. Mulder explained why he wanted to get back to his wife. His jaded boss laughed but instructed another of the drivers to drop Mulder off at the hospital on his way uptown.

 

Mulder noticed he pressed his right foot against the floorboard of the passenger side, wanting the truck driver to go faster.

 

Mulder had called the hospital from a telephone booth during the day, so he knew he had a healthy son, and Phoebe was okay. He'd called his mother in Boston and gotten to talk to her while Vater was at work, which soothed his soul.

 

"My name is Fox Mulder," he told the nurse at the front desk. She looked up, seeming surprised he spoke English. "I'm here to pick up my wife and son."

 

The nurse pointed him toward a room down the hall, but Mulder stood at the desk a second, repeating those words to himself.

 

He had a son. That reality settled over him, taking some time to sink in.

 

In the maternity ward, women and newborn babies filled every bed. Phoebe was in the far corner. She sat in bed and held a tiny bundle. She smiled at Mulder tiredly, seeming truly happy to see him. If there was ever a moment he loved her, it was that one.

 

He could have been in the Antarctic, and he still would have been warm.

 

"Look, Fox," she whispered as Mulder sat on the edge of the narrow bed. "Look at him."

 

"Look what we did," he whispered back, folding back the blanket to see the baby. He counted ten fingers and ten toes. He saw father's nose and his own chin and Phoebe's big brown eyes. For two drunken fools in a world falling apart, they'd done miraculously. "He's perfect."

 

He touched a tiny wrinkled foot, and the baby's toes curled toward his finger. There was a spark. Duty and instincts met, merged, fused into love, and his life wasn't his own anymore. William Adam Mulder was born on January 30, 1939 at the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children.

 

"It's going to be okay," Mulder promised her. Promised them. He'd find a better job. They'd get out of the Lower East Side tenements and live somewhere people spoke English. He'd love Phoebe, and she'd love him, and they'd raise their son. Spring would come and there wouldn't be a war in Europe and the future would be promising again.

 

"It will be," she agreed.

 

They took Will home that night, with Phoebe wearing Mulder's coat and William wrapped in Mulder's sweater and a blanket the charity hospital gave them. The snowdrifts reached their knees. Mulder had missed several hours of work and spent the money his pocket on the taxicab ride home, and yet knew everything would turn out okay.

 

Things were looking up.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder took sinister pleasure in thwarting Nurse Sunshine's mission to spread good cheer. No, he wasn't hungry. No, he didn't want coffee or a cigarette. No, he didn't want to talk. No, he didn't want anything except to occupy his designated chair outside Phoebe's hospital room and wait for Dana and morning. After repeated attempts at brightening his life, the nurse gave up and went home at six AM, which left Mulder a solid hour of wonderfully morose silence.     

 

No one else on the ward gave a damn about him, and he liked it that way. Until further notice, the bluebird of happiness had been replaced by the grizzled buzzard of malcontent.

 

Sneakers squeaked down the waxed floor of the hospital corridor and stopped in front of Mulder’s chair with a final anxious yelp. Once there, the sneakers rocked back and forth as his son shifted his weight from the dingy canvas tips to the worn rubber heels and back again. Mulder didn't look up. The shoes came to a standstill except for some nervous toe wiggling.

 

"How was 'Faust?'" Will sounded as if he drove eighty miles-per-hour in third gear.

 

Without disturbing his Thinker pose, Mulder answered, "It was great. Wonderful evening: the arias, the ambiance, the women in horned hats and steel underwear. I've never slept better. William, did you need something from your book bag yesterday, or was it a ploy to check on your mother because she didn't answer the phone? How many times has she overdosed on her pills?"

 

The sneakers started rocking again.

 

"I thought so." Mulder raised his head to discover Will held Emily, still in her cowgirl-printed pajamas and looking tearfully unhappy. "Why aren't you in school?" Mulder asked tersely, and repeated to Dana as she caught up with Will, "Why isn't he in school? He can't go to school in blue jeans."

 

Dana threw up her hands and tilted her head, indicating the joyful series of events that comprised the last twelve hours. "The same reason Em's still wearing her pajamas and almost brought Kitten to her doctor's appointment."

 

"The Gods are against you?"

 

"I'm beginning to think so."

 

"You're not the only one." Mulder stood, stretching his aching back. "She's okay, Will. Your mother's resting, like she was when you called the nurses' station at one, and at three, and at five." He squinted at his new watch. "It's seven, right?"

 

"Seven-oh-five," William corrected crisply. 

 

Mulder grunted and rubbed his eyes. "Anyway, the doctor saw her and she's fine."

 

"My doctor?" Emily asked apprehensively.

 

"No, not your doctor," Dana promised. "Another doctor."

 

"I don't want to see my doctor," Emily insisted loudly, turning the nearby nurses' heads. "I don't like him."

 

"I know you don't," her mother responded. She exhaled like she deflated through her lips. "Mulder, I brought you clean clothes. Come change; there's a nurses' lounge. Will, watch Emily. Fran," she asked a passing nurse, "Could you keep an eye on them, please?"

 

"Sure, Dana." The woman wrinkled her nose at Emily, who didn't wrinkle back. After so many medical tests, Em distrusted anyone wearing white; even the milkman was under suspicion.  

 

Dana picked up the shopping bag she'd brought and walked away, her heels clicking and full skirt swaying. She didn’t look back to see if Mulder was followed. He was left standing in front of his son, Em, and the wrinkly-nosed nurse, looking less than master of his domain. Pretty soon he'd be the old man who stood outside the dressing room holding his wife's purse while she tried on brassieres. 

 

"William, watch Em for a few minutes," Mulder ordered, because Dana saying it didn’t suffice. Mulder slouched down the hall after her.    

 

Will kept his mouth shut, at least until his father was out of earshot.

 

"Bad morning?" Mulder asked Dana as he closed the door of the nurses' lounge after them.

 

She looked at him like a disenchanted hero trying to decide if the villain merited a bullet or if she should pistol-whip him and keep walking.

 

"Bad morning?" she answered. "I had to drag Emily out of the hotel and into the car. Literally drag. She doesn't want any more needles and I can't blame her, though the alternative... Will's climbed the walls all night; he's upset and he thinks his mother's overdose was his fault. No one slept. No one ate breakfast except the stray cat, which peed on the rug. I yelled at The Plaza's parking valet. I had to make Will pull over and let me drive because he was running red lights. That also involved yelling. William promised Emily a pony to get her out of the car and into the hospital. I think I'm wearing two different shades of beige stockings. Yes, you could say it's been a bad morning." 

 

"Any word about the, um, future of the bunny?"

 

She shook her head, which might mean the rabbit was in no mortal danger or might be sentenced to death; he didn't know. "Still no comment," she said as if not wanting to discuss it. "What about you? You have that 'show me to the Scotch' look on your face, which worries me."

 

"Me? I have a look? You're late; I'm wearing the stupidest grin I own, sweetheart." He got both ends of his mouth to tilt upward simultaneously and, with his stubbly beard and disheveled hair, probably looked like an evil scarecrow.    

 

Dana crossed her arms and leaned back against the dented lockers. "You. You have a look. She was your wife; I'm sure you're upset-"

 

"Ex-wife. Ex. Over. Done with. All she is to me is a big check I sign every month and a bigger pain in the ass."

 

She shook her head again. 

 

"I don't need you to come to my rescue and bandage my boo-boos. You can't kiss this better. I'm a big boy. I'm fine."

 

"You're not fine. You're so far from fine, you should wear a sign around your neck warning people to keep their fingers clear of the cage because you may bite."

 

Mulder barred his teeth at her and growled, but she didn't look amused.

 

"All right; I'm not fine," he admitted sarcastically. "You could add up all my issues and have a Greek play. It was my mother and her overly zealous toileting training. I fear abandonment, indigestion, and big green bugs. When rejected, I narcissistically self-destruct with women who remind me of my sister in order to reinforce my self-serving guilt complex. I'm obsessive, self-centered, insecure, cynical, and still a closet romantic. I read Robert Browning's poems, but I don't admit to liking them. I'd wear women's shoes, but who can find tasteful heels in a size twelve? I repress, project, displace, intellectualize, and sublimate, all in one swoop. No one is ever more disappointed with me than me. I hate opera. And zucchini bread; it's an aberration of nature. There, I feel much better. Thank you for listening."

 

She put her hands on her hips. "Oh, for God's sake, what's wrong, Mulder?" 

 

He started to tell her, hesitated, and didn't. 

 

Dana asked again, but he shrugged, feeling a dangerous power and eye-of-the-storm calmness in not answering. There was safety in smoldering fury. Nothing could hurt him unless he allowed it to. He was bulletproof. He could leap tall buildings in a single bound.    

 

"I know you and Phoebe got into it yesterday morning, but you can't think her overdose was your fault."

 

"I don't. For the first time in twenty-seven years, I don't think something is my fault. In fact, I couldn't care less. In fact – I’d hate it for Will, but for me - I wish we hadn't found her in time."

 

He shoved his hands deep in his pockets, fishing around for his super-human invincibility. Mulder found some change and blue lint. He must have left his cape, tights, and phone booth in his other trousers. 

 

"No, nothing's wrong at all. All right – sit." Dana backed him toward the sofa and began unbuttoning the shirt he'd worn since Monday morning. The fabric still smelled faintly of sand and ocean air and yesterday, like an innocent memory pressed and preserved between the pages of his mind. "Let's get you cleaned up and you'll feel better."

 

"Damn it, I can dress myself, Nurse Scully. I'm not helpless."

 

"I'm trying to help." She jerked at his buttons. "I can do it faster than you can."

 

"I don't need your Goddamn help!" he yelled at her, pulling away. "I don't need anybody's help."

 

The light bulb overhead exploded, leaving half the room in darkness.

 

Dana jumped. "Christ!"

 

Mulder started to apologize but thought it better not to. He exhaled though, getting his temper in check.

 

Dana sat on the torn, sagging sofa. She put her elbows on her knees and her forehead on her palms. For a second, Mulder thought she would cry, but she didn't. She just looked tired and alone.

 

"I'm sorry, honey," he said. "I didn't mean to yell. I know you've had a long night, too."

 

Mulder saw a little sink and mirror beside the nurses' lockers. He rinsed his face and stared at the lines around his eyes while she didn't answer him.

 

"Sorry," he muttered again.

 

"Is it-"

 

"No. Whatever you're going to guess, the answer is no." He stared through the man in the mirror and said angrily, "Phoebe went to bed with me so she could claim she was having a baby and I'd give her money for an abortion. That was the reason she did it, except she accidentally got knocked up," he said crudely. "And I married her. Will tells me she hates him, and he's right. She got a son she never wanted and a husband she was trying to play for a chump, and I never had a clue."

 

"Does Will know this?"

 

"I don’t think so. Usually, she tells him I got drunk and forced her. She was seventeen, according to Phoebe's math. By my math, she was twenty-six." The world had the Gregorian calendar, the Hebrew calendar, and the Phoebe calendar, which ran on dog years and vanity.

 

Dana came to him and, too tired to fight back, Mulder let her hand stay on his shoulder as he leaned over the sink and rested his forehead against the cool, smeary mirror.

 

"I'm sorry," she said sadly.

 

"I liked her,” he confessed. “Phoebe was pretty and fun and one of those girls who made you feel like everything you said was witty and brilliant. I knew she didn’t love me, but I- I wanted her to think I was sophisticated. Worldly. That I spent my evenings in bars, not libraries. I drank Scotch, not soda. And if a woman invited me back to her flat, I said ‘yes.’” He tried to stop talking but words spilled out like a pot boiling over on the stovetop. “I married her. I left school. I alienated my family. I'm sorry she was miserable, but I was miserable, too. She said she left because I was never home. Where the hell did she think I was? At the corner pool hall, having a beer with my pals? I was at work. Will needed milk and to see the doctor, and he needed two parents, even if he barely knew one of them. I don't think Phoebe got the raw end of the deal."

 

Dana rubbed his back silently, soothing him.

 

"The 'silly game' taking me away from my family? It fed and clothed and housed my family. I never wanted to be a professional baseball player; I wanted us to be able to eat. She left me, she divorced me, but she wanted to stop by for a roll in the hay? She wants me but she doesn't want me? I make her happy, but I don't? Do you want to know how much of a chump I am? I would have married her a second time. I keep thinking 'If she didn't want the baby in the first place, why didn't she say so?' I would have given her the money and never told a soul. That’s what worldly, sophisticated men do, isn’t it? I think of Will and I think 'what kind of man could even think that?' He's worth it - every second of her schizophrenic shtick - but did she have to make it so damn hard?"

 

He’d said it. Admitted it. He couldn’t take the words back, but he bit his lip, making sure no more awful secrets escaped.

 

Dana’s hand still rubbed his back, her fingernails grazing his wrinkled shirt. "A father doesn’t have to love where a child came from to love a child," she said softly. 

 

"Good. Because I damn sure don't." He turned around and buried his face in her hair. "Will's been taking my clothes. My new gray shirt. I like that shirt. Why'd he promise Emily a pony? Why not a puppy? Where in the hell are we gonna put a pony?" Mulder whispered to her, sniffing.

 

"In the basement." She held him close. "We'll clear out the underwear trolls."

 

The little buttons on the front of her dress pressed into his chest, and the layers of crinoline under her skirt sighed and compressed as he crushed her against him, afraid she might get away. Mulder ran his hands over her breasts and down and around her waist. His fingertips still touched, but they wouldn't soon.  

 

He could sense... Something. A force. A life. He felt a new life within her, part of her, yet separate.

 

"I hate her," he confessed, exhaling angrily. "I love him, but I can't think of anything nasty enough to call her."

 

"I can, but I grew up around sailors."

 

His chest rumbled as he almost laughed. He sniffed again. "Sorry, honey. I'm sorry. I'm sure you didn't need anything else to deal with today."

 

"Emily sees Dr. Calderon at eight. We're supposed to be there at seven-thirty to get ready."

 

"You're going to try?"

 

"I'll try. I'm not forcing her. I'll cajole, I'll bribe, and I'll plead, though. Will you be okay?"

 

He nodded and loosened his death grip on her body. "Yeah. Yes, I'll be okay. Let me calm down, get some coffee, and I'll be up to help. Tell Will to go with you and Emily, just in case."

 

"Just in case of what?"

 

He didn't answer. He didn't know.

 

"I'll tell him," she answered.

 

*~*~*~* 

 

Mulder could have a hot, flavored beverage that didn't taste like coffee, didn't taste like cocoa, or didn't taste like chicken soup. He saw options for extra sweet and extra cream, but none for extra caffeine, which was what he needed. Mulder stared at the buttons and rattled the change in his pocket, trying to decide. 

 

Behind him, someone dragged a metal chair across the floor to the vending machines with a jerky, nerve-wracking screech. Thinking the next machine might have something better, Mulder looked over and saw a boy climbing on a folding chair to reach the selection buttons.

 

"Do you need help, buddy?" Mulder asked out of habit, but realized: "Gibson? Wow. It's good to see you again. I was worried about you."

 

"Hello, Mr. Mulder. No, thank you, Mr. Mulder. I don't need help," the solemn child responded. He pushed the button for chicken soup. A paper cup dropped down and began filling nosily.

 

Noting the boy wore hospital pajamas and slippers, Mulder offered, "Do you want me to carry that upstairs for you?" The children's ward was one floor above them and the stairs around the corner. "I'm going up anyway."

 

"No thank you, Mr. Mulder."

 

"Okay. Be careful. It's hot. Wait and we'll ride the elevator together. I'd like to meet your Mom and Dad."

 

As Mulder dropped his nickels in the slot of the first machine and pushed the buttons, Gibson climbed down from the chair and pushed the little door of the second machine aside to get his cup. The kid lived inside his own head, so Mulder wasn’t surprised Gibson politely said, "Goodbye, Mr. Mulder," and turned away. 

 

"Bye," Mulder answered. They had the same destination; he'd catch up in a second. He didn't worry until he saw Gibson open a security door marked 'high voltage.' "Whoa; wait a second, buddy. That's the wrong-"

 

Mulder bolted through the door after Gibson, catching up with him in a narrow service corridor. It sloped gently downward and grew gradually smaller until it disappeared into a pinpoint of light far in the distance. Overhead, rusting pipes and duct work hung from the ceiling like post-modern spiders' webs, and water stains crawled down the cement walls. "You're not supposed to be back here. Come on; I'll walk you upstairs."

 

"I'm supposed to be back here," Gibson asserted.

 

"No, you're not. You'll be in trouble. Big Trouble," Mulder, not the disciplinarian of the house, added. "Where's your mother? Your real mother?"

 

Gibson shrugged. His glasses fogged as he tried to sip his soup.

 

"You have parents somewhere. You didn't come from Diana's Rent-a-Kid-to-Impress-Mulder store. Who takes care of you?"

 

From behind his steamed lenses, Gibson blinked.

 

"Who brought you to the hospital? Why are you here?"

 

Diana claimed her 'son' was six, but Gibson seemed closer to Em's age. After that day in Central Park, Mulder called the police to report a possible kidnapping, unsure the extent of Diana’s craziness. She had bugged Mulder’s phone, and Gibson certainly wasn't her son. After searching, the police concluded no one named ‘Diana Fowley’ existed, nor did a missing child fitting Gibson's description. Mulder argued he'd seen Diana’s picture in stag magazines. The police said Mulder was mistaken - that was another woman. Mulder showed the police officer a pin-up of Diana, but the officer shrugged and said women in “those magazines” didn't use their real names, anyway. They'd “continue to investigate all avenues,” which detectives promised if they had no idea and wanted annoying people to go away.

 

"Gibson, why are you in the hospital?" Mulder repeated in frustration.

 

Blink. Sip. "I live here."

 

Mulder tilted his head from side to side, stretching the aching muscles. "Buddy, sometimes I feel like I do too. Come on; let's go find your Mom and Dad."

 

Mulder took the cup so Gibson wouldn't burn himself and turned back to the door to the lounge.   

 

He tried the knob, but it was locked. "Oh, shit," Mulder muttered.

 

"I drink all the soup first and eat the noodles out of the bottom of the cup," Gibson said as though someone asked a question.

 

"What?" Mulder jiggled the knob again.

 

"You wondered what I was doing at the vending machines. I like the chicken soup. Not the hot chocolate, though. All the cocoa sinks to the bottom and makes icky black sludge. Mr. Mulder, can I have my cup back?"

 

"Stay right here."

 

Mulder handed the cup back while he looked for a way out. He found several identical doors, but each one he tried was locked. While he jiggled and cursed, Gibson turned away again and ambled down the dim hallway.

 

"Gibson! Come back- Damn it!"

 

Gibson opened a door opposite and a few yards down from the one they came through. Mulder had tried it, but the latch must have been stuck. Not knowing what else to do, he went after the boy again, and found himself in some medical laboratory or exam room. 

 

The room was so cold Mulder expected his breath to form white clouds in front of his mouth. Experiments were set up to run overnight, and amber liquid drained slowly through glass coils and into flasks. Metal cabinets lined an entire wall and low stainless-steel tanks punctuated another, their metal sides covered with frost. Mulder guessed the tanks to be refrigeration units, given the hum of the compressors attached to them. In the center of the lab he saw an operating table bordered by trays of surgical instruments. Above the table, an adjustable spotlight glared down, illuminating nothing.

 

"No one's here, Mr. Mulder," Gibson assured him, crossing the tile floor in his slippers. "No one comes until eight."

 

"We still can't be here." Mulder tried to figure out where 'here' was. Emily spent so much time at the hospital he thought he had the place memorized. Mulder hadn't seen this area before, though. "I mean it," he added.          

 

Gibson sipped his bullion as he crossed the room, seeming to know the route, but fogging his glasses again in the process. The boy stopped to wipe his glasses on the hem of his pajama top. Mulder tried the door at the back of the lab and found it locked. Getting increasingly angry, he tried the door they came in. It was bolted as well. It must have locked automatically after they entered. "Great. We can't get out. Maybe there's a telephone."

 

The doorknob turned easily under Gibson's hand. Mulder's stomach started to get nervous.  

 

"Where are we?" Mulder asked sternly. He propped the door at the back of the lab open with his foot and put his hand on Gibson's shoulder to stop him. Outside the door, bare lightbulbs sputtered every fifty feet, revealing another identical cement hallway lined with unmarked black doors. It was also cool but damp, as though they were underground. It reminded Mulder of a beehive with all the bees away; the hallway had the same empty stillness of activity on hold. "Gibson, stop playing games. We're not supposed to be down here."   

 

"I am."

 

"You are? You're supposed to be here?" Mulder asked in confusion.

 

"No, not right here. This is Dr. Calderon's lab. My room is down the hall, but I can open the door. It's a secret. They don't know I can do it."

 

Keeping his hand on the doorknob, Mulder squatted down so he and boy were eye-to-eye. "You must be in the same project as our little girl," he said sympathetically. "She doesn't like the needles either. Are you sneakin' out, buddy?"

 

"No, I'm not a hybrid. I was born this way, like you. Mr. Mulder, could we feed the ducks again sometime?"

 

"A-a hybrid?"

 

Gibson nodded.

 

Stunned, Mulder leaned back, propping open the door like a human doorstop. Every few seconds, he glanced up at Gibson, who waited patiently. "A hybrid," he repeated. "A hybrid with what?"

 

"With Them. Mr. Mulder, the ducks?"

 

"Sure," he mumbled. 

 

His 'Them' were the same as Gibson's 'Them.' Mulder found that strangely comforting. There was a 'Them,' whatever the hell 'Them' was. Were. Anyway, Mulder wasn't just flypaper for brunette fruitcakes. Diana was a 'Them' - something to keep Mulder occupied and drunk and away from Dana.

 

It was a Picasso; all the important features were there but shuffled together into a confusing mishmash. Once someone told Mulder what he should see, it was obvious, but until then he saw an anatomical tossed salad. Once he had the magic Them decoder ring, the pieces started falling into place; Mulder needed some time to think. 

 

"It's the implantation room."

 

"What is? To implant what?" Mulder thought he asked aloud but might not have. Reality felt disjointed. If the world was a merry-go-round, he'd kneel at the edge and push with his foot to get it moving faster.

 

He looked back at the operating table and noticed stirrups at one end like doctors used as women gave birth. These, though, had straps to tie the patient's legs apart. Farther up he saw two more straps to fasten wrists down. Doctors didn't allow men in delivery rooms, but Mulder couldn't imagine four-point restraints being standard issue.

 

"They're coming. She needs you," Gibson said in his toneless way, sounding like he relayed bulletins from his own private radio.

 

"Who's coming?" Mulder asked. He stood up straight, looking up and down the corridor for the bad guys. "Who needs me?"

 

"The hybrid girl and the pretty woman from the park." 

 

Heart pounding, Mulder hurried after Gibson, who again opened the door at the front of the laboratory with no problem.

 

"That was locked. How did you open it?" 

 

The boy didn't respond, but he crossed the hallway and opened the original 'high voltage' security door that led them through the looking glass in the first place. He dodged aside, and Mulder rushed past him. Mulder instinctively reached for a weapon absent from his hip since World War II.

 

Mulder stepped back into Normal. The glaring lights over the coffee machines and the smell of sticky-sweet pastries was overwhelming in comparison to the mechanized sterility of the laboratory and the stale air of the catacomb of service corridors.

 

"You didn't put money in the vending machine," Mulder realized, feeling disoriented as he turned back to look at Gibson. "You can work the machines, like you can open those locks. You answered questions I only thought. You can do what I can do, but better. How is it you can make the coffee machine work without coins, but you had to push the button to choose soup?"

 

Gibson shrugged. "I like to push the button. Goodbye, Mr. Mulder," he said and closed the metal door. 

 

"No, wait-" he said desperately as the latch clicked into place. 

 

Mulder tried the door, but it wouldn’t open. He listened but heard only the air conditioner blowing through the overhead vents and the distant cacophony of voices in the hospital lobby. He concentrated on the lock, willing it to move. Nothing happened, so he went back to calling, "Open the door, Gibson! Come on, buddy..."

 

Damn it, he had a clue - something tangible he could hold in his hand and examine. It was there, concealed by steel plate and hinges and hiding in plain sight. He'd put the border of the jigsaw puzzle together and he needed to fill in those tricky middle pieces.

 

Bad guys. He needed bad guys.

 

Mulder pounded on the door with his fist until people started wandering in, looking at him warily, and backing away.  

 

His watch said seven nineteen; barely any time had passed at all.    

 

His coffee - extra cream, no sugar, since he'd probably share with Dana - waited in the dispenser behind the little plastic screen. Prowling the room, Mulder drank it carelessly, burning his mouth. He ran his tongue along his teeth, comforted by the unpleasant yet familiar sensation. 

 

Beginning to doubt himself, Mulder looked around the lounge, waiting for someone to jump out and yell “April Fool!”

 

How many hours had passed since he slept? He spent last night in the emergency room and the hospital ward with Phoebe, and the night before at Yankee Field with Frohike. Forty-eight hours? Sixty? The universe started to get unfocused. He merely had a paranoid, self-serving hallucination. It was all perfectly explicable and related to some hard to pronounce medical condition Dana would know.   

 

He tried the security door one last time, found it locked, and stared curiously at the metal folding chair still in front of the vending machine. Picking up his coffee, Mulder started to take the elevator, but decided the stairs would be faster.

               

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder never thought of Dana as diminutive, even though he once caught her standing on his kitchen counter to reach a high cabinet. Making love face-to-face was a misnomer; her face reached his throat. If Dana drove the car, Mulder’s knees touched the dash. Still, based on vocabulary and mettle alone, she had to be at least six-foot-six.  

 

Mulder and Will were the same height and build, and she looked so small beside William. In the hospital hallway, Dana held Emily as she spoke. Will tilted his head down, listened to Dana, and he nodded. Whatever the problem, William would handle it. Will put a hand on Dana’s back and guided her away from Dr. Calderon’s lab, and toward Mulder and the elevator and stairwell. Watching his son walk with her, jaw set and head high, Mulder saw the end of a teenager and the beginning of a man.

 

Emily's face looked flushed; she'd been crying. Her mother had the same determined expression as Will.

 

Mulder and Dana had many late-night discussions about how long to put Em through this. If all the needles and tears made enough difference to bother. Emily wouldn't get better; every doctor was specific about that. Dr. Calderon managed to slow the progress of the disease, but the side effects of his treatment made Emily as sick as the mysterious auto-immune anemia, and she dreaded the hospital. Dana dreaded the hospital. Mulder hadn’t told Dana, but the dividends from his savings and investment accounts hadn’t covered Emily’s medical bills since February; each month, at the bottom of Langly’s columns, Mulder’s net worth decreased. That was inconsequential, though. Mulder could do more endorsements. He could play exhibition games if he had to. Hell, he could stop buying cars, keeping Pan Am in business, and maintaining two posh residences three states apart. What he wasn’t certain he could do: stand by and watch a little girl die.

 

"Where have you been?" Will asked tersely, sounding paternal.

 

"Chasing rabbits. Are we going somewhere?"

 

Will nodded. As Mulder got closer, he saw Dana's bloodshot eyes and damp cheeks. Emily curled against her chest, sniffing, and refused to look up. 

 

"I can't do this," Dana said hoarsely. 

 

"Do you want me to try?" 

 

Emily liked the 'I get a shot; Mulder gets a shot' game. Not as much as she liked 'Bub gets a shot and Bub gets another shot,' but close. The bandage on the back of Will's hand indicated they played that game while trying to get Emily to let the nurse put an IV line in.

 

"No, I want to go home."

 

"Okay," Mulder said quietly. Will stepped aside, and Mulder put his arm around Dana’s shoulders. "We go home."

 

"I can't do this to her," she repeated shakily. "I won't let this be her life. She deserves to be a little girl." 

 

"Okay. We're done. We go home. We're going right now," Mulder assured her. Without being asked, Will took Emily from Dana. Temporarily relieved of her burden, Dana leaned into Mulder as though they could merge into one, seeming mindless of anything else around them. "Right now," Mulder reiterated. He stoked her hair and the hot skin on the back of her neck. "We're taking her home."

 

A chill passed through Mulder. They were taking her home to die. They were giving up. Even molecule of his body wanted to argue. Bribe Emily, sedate her, plead, pray - do something.

 

What Mulder did was hold Dana and keep his mouth shut.

 

"Miss Scully!" Dr. Calderon curtly, probably having been alerted by his nurses. "What is the meaning of this? Is there a problem, Miss Scully?"

 

Mulder answered. "There's no problem; we're leaving."

 

"I wasn't addressing you, Mr. Mulder. Miss Scully, let's speak in my office."

 

Dana's back rose and fell as she took a deep breath. She squared her shoulders, turned, and said, "We're taking her home. I'm withdrawing my daughter from your project."

 

"It's not that simple. I can see you're upset. Let's speak privately. Right this way, please. Right this way, please," he repeated firmly.

 

“No,” Mulder responded, and took Dana’s hand.

 

“There are papers you need to sign.”

 

After a second, Dana’s head nodded. She followed Dr. Calderon down the hall, to his office. Will and Mulder followed. Emily kept her face against Will’s shoulder. In the office, Dana got a wooden chair – like a kid in the principal’s office. Will and Mulder stood behind her.

 

"You're a nurse, Miss Scully," Dr. Calderon said as he slid into the oversized chair behind his desk. He leaned forward, folding his hands. "You're aware of the repercussions of withholding treatment, even for a short period. Your daughter is very ill and very valuable to our research. I'm sure we can reach some mutually beneficial agreement." Dr. Calderon added, "I assure you the consequences of this hasty decision will be-" he paused to purse his lips. "-dire. To everyone involved."

 

"Don't threaten me," she responded evenly, getting up from her chair. "How do I know what you're doing isn't making her sicker?"

 

"I can assure you it isn't. It's the only thing between her and-" He did the annoying lip-pursing thing again. "The inevitable. I would say what you're doing - withholding medical treatment - constitutes child abuse. You're the mother of an illegitimate child and you're living with an alcoholic womanizer who was unable to get custody of his own son. I believe criminal charges were filed against you last year for having an abortion. I can see how a judge might not be sympathetic to your position, given your questionable history."

 

If Will hadn't been in the know about all the dirty laundry before, he was now. Mulder shook his head, speaking for the first time since they entered the opulent office. "Don't try it; my lawyer will bury you."

 

Dr. Calderon ignored Mulder and continued addressing Dana. "You must understand you can't walk away from the project."

 

"Watch me," Dana responded. 

 

A side door opened. Two men slid out of the proverbial woodwork: a towering goon, and a familiar old man nursing a cigarette. Dr. Calderon pushed back from his desk, distancing himself.

 

Mulder tensed. Smokey probably didn’t volunteer to read to sick children at the hospital in his spare time. The hair on the back of Mulder’s neck bristled like a storm approached.   

 

"Mr. Mulder," the smoking man said. He leaned against the edge of the doctor's expensive desk. "Miss Scully. Is there a problem?"

 

"No problem. We were leaving," Mulder responded, and reached for Dana's hand.

 

"I'm sure we can reach some agreement," the old man said casually. He leaned close and blew smoke in Dana's face. "Very sure." 

 

The smoking man didn't move, but his goon did - blocking Will and Emily's path to the office door.

 

"What are you doing? Who do you think you are? This is a hospital, not a prison," Mulder argued. "Any white person can seek or refuse medical treatment here. We're refusing. To Hell with your study."

 

"We've invested a significant amount of time and money in this child," Dr. Calderon piped up, personifying the word 'pipsqueak.' "She's worth a great deal to us."

 

"Bill me," Mulder snapped.

 

Smokey smiled so coldly Mulder shivered.

 

In a flash of silver, the goon drew a pistol and pointed it at Will's temple.

 

Sound stopped. Seconds stretched like hours. 

 

Will froze. He still held Emily tightly against him. His brown eyes cut sideways at the gun and at his father. Will’s chest rose and fell rapidly, but he didn’t move otherwise. 

 

Mulder saw but didn't hear Goon cock the pistol with his thumb. The smoking man’s henchman leveled the barrel inches from the hair Will fixed so often, and he waited for the order.

 

The world became a series of stark, silent black and white textures, like an Ansel Adams photograph. Don't hurt him, don't hurt him, don't hurt him, Mulder prayed silently.

 

Goon shifted his weight between his feet. He lowered the pistol an inch but raised it again.

 

Will trembled. Mulder saw a tear trickle from the corner of his son's eye. Emily hid her face against Will's shirt, gripping fistfuls of the fabric.

 

The expensive clock on the wall ticked, the brass pendulum swinging with perfect Swiss precision. Color flooded back into the world. Mulder saw it: blood red. The color a father saw when someone threatened his child.

 

Mulder felt his heartbeat in his ears. His fingertips tingled with fury, ready for battle. With the static intensity of a soldier, he waited, which was a thousand times more difficult than attacking. 

 

"Think this through, Miss Scully," a distant man’s voice rasped. "He can forgive you an illegitimate daughter. He can forgive you for losing the babies. But could he ever forgive you if something happened to his son?"

 

Inhale.

 

The smoking man leaned so close his lips almost brushed her cheek. "We don't want the boy. The boy is nothing. Tell Mulder to take him home, Miss Scully. Let them walk away while they still can. Haven't you hurt them enough?" 

 

Exhale.

 

Smokey glanced down at her abdomen. His eyes caressed her body like a lover's hands. "I know your secret," he added dramatically.

 

Inhale.

 

"And I know yours," Dana responded coolly.

 

"Don't play games with me, little girl," he hissed.

 

Exhale.

 

Dana didn't flinch as she added, "I can prove it."

 

The old man shook his head, not believing her.

 

Inhale.

 

"A majestic December day in Central Park," she said. "Miss Scully carries a blue book with a paper clip marking her favorite chapter." She paused, tilting her head back. "Security Council Resolution 1013. The Syndicate. Litchfield. 731. December 22, 2012."

 

Exhale.

 

Dana took a business card from the brass cardholder on Dr. Calderon's desk. She showed the card to Smokey, snapped her fingers, and opened her hand. The white card had magically vanished. "I had an uncle who taught me to make things disappear from one place and reappear in another. Where would you like your secrets to reappear?" she asked. "Check," she breathed. "Your move."

 

Inhale.

 

The smoking man recoiled, seeming surprised. Mulder threw his cup of scalding coffee in the goon's face, grabbed the gun, and shoved Will and Dana through the doorway in front of him. 

 

"Run!" Mulder ordered them.

 

He turned back and kicked Goon hard in the ribs, hearing and feeling the bones give. "Don't you ever- You son-of-a-bitch!" Mulder shouted at him. He grabbed Goon by the hair and slammed his head against the floor. It made a dull sound, like a melon splitting as it hit the sidewalk.

 

"Dad!" Will yelled from halfway down the hall.      

 

"Down the stairs," Mulder yelled back, following, but disappointed he didn't get to break as few of old Smokey's bones as well.

 

As they pounded down the metal stairs, the alarm blared for hospital security. Mulder heard the heavy sound of the men's shoes chasing them. They burst into the lobby and rounded the corner to be intercepted by a hapless security guard. Mulder punched the guard in the jaw and kept running, chalking up his second assault charge of the morning. At the hospital front door, a half-dozen more guards waited. Mulder saw blue lights flashing through the lobby windows as the patrol cars arrived outside.

 

Whirling around, Mulder grabbed Dana's wrist and ordered Will to head for the vending machines. Unlock the door, unlock the door, unlock the door, Mulder chanted silently. The footsteps got closer. Dana started to falter. Mulder put his arm around her shoulders, keeping her moving. Saying a final silent prayer, he jerked the knob. The 'high voltage' door opened.

 

"I can tell you where your sister is," the smoking man called. He braced one hand on the coffee machine as he gasped. "She's alive, Mulder. Or I can destroy you."

 

Mulder hesitated less than a heartbeat but followed Will and Dana into the musty corridor. He closed the steel security door firmly after him. The knob locked. He tried to catch his breath and make sense of whatever had happened.

 

Dana leaned against the damp cement wall, looking pale and disoriented.

 

"Honey, are you-"

 

Mulder grabbed her shoulders as she slid to the floor in a crush of white crinoline. Emily started crying again. Will tried to shush her, jiggling her nervously. Under the bare light bulb swinging dizzily from the ceiling, as Mulder picked Dana up, his watch read seven twenty-six.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Either a hundred and fifteen pounds of pretty woman weighed less a decade ago or Mulder was getting old. He paused to adjust his grip on Dana's limp body, trying to find a polite way to carry her that didn't make his arms ache.

 

"Where are we going?" Will asked, shifting Em against his chest. William got her to stop crying, and she seemed terrified into silence.   

 

In the distance, men shouted. Boots pounded angrily against the hard floor. The lynch mob sounded as if it had gained a few more supporters and caught the scent of blood.  

 

"Keep moving," Mulder ordered, commanding his feet to start walking again.  

 

His senses told him they remained underground. Having no idea where the tunnels led, they tried every knob they passed and entered any room they found unlocked. So far, that unscientific system kept them ahead of Them. 

 

Will thought Mulder had a plan.

 

Mulder did. He planned for them not to die today.

 

The first open door had been Dr. Calderon's lab - either some hub or Gibson's favorite shortcut - then another corridor, and a series of archives with shelves of boxes to the ceiling. Another identical corridor. Gibson could be carefully, remotely directing their escape, or Mulder could be opening the doors, or they could be circling mindlessly like cattle being steered toward the slaughterhouse; Mulder didn't know.         

 

"This one's unlocked," Will whispered. The boy braced the door open with his foot while Mulder carried Dana inside. His son stopped short, mouth agape. The door banged closed behind them, announcing their location and potentially locking them in. Will pulled Emily tighter against him and covered her head in his hand.

 

Holding Dana in his arms, Mulder pivoted in a gradual, stationary circle. He saw it, but he couldn't comprehend what he saw. If much of the morning seemed surreal, this room constituted pure science fiction.  

 

"I understand the doctor not being keen on Dana withdrawing Em from their research project." Will’s voice was soft, like he told a secret. "And you did hit those men, Daddy-O. I'm uncertain why there's a concrete maze down here, or how you know where we're going, but I thought I'd ask later. Once people aren't chasing us and pointing guns. But, Dorothy," his son said deliberately, reverently, "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."

 

Mulder saw dozens of high tables, each bearing a woman's heavily pregnant, nearly nude, sleeping body. IV's dripped into their arms, and tubes - food and oxygen, Mulder guessed - ran into their mouths. Each had her groin and breasts covered with light blue fabric, but her swollen abdomen exposed. From the ceiling, long, needle-like probes extended downward and into their stomachs.

 

A needle going into her belly, Mulder remembered Dana telling him once, after Mulder woke her from a nightmare.

 

"What are they doing down here, Dad?" William asked.

 

They're building a better human: smarter, healthier, more athletic, Frohike speculated last year. And they're doing it against people's will, Mulder remembered Frohike adding.

 

"I think," Mulder said uncertainly, "They're making babies."

 

"I don't think- I'm not telling how I know this-" William stipulated, "- but I don't think this is how people normally do that."

 

She's an experiment, Dana once whispered drunkenly, when Mulder insisted she tell him why Emily was sick. The experiment, for Emily, Dana had said, had failed.

 

Mulder felt pounding in his temples he blamed on his lack of sleep and a queasy stomach he attributed to the bad coffee he hadn't drank. "Keep walking, Will. Don't think; keep moving."

 

They took the baby, he remembered Dana sobbing Christmas night. He hated her, she’d said. Mulder didn’t hate her; he just hadn’t believed her until this moment.

 

Under the blue-black lights, the room stayed completely, eerily silent. The women didn't move, didn't even seem real. As they reached the last row, one's belly shifted. Will jumped away like he'd been burned.

 

"It's the baby. The baby's moving," Mulder assured him, but his son didn't look comforted.   

 

Two nights ago, Frohike lay on the grass at Yankee Field and asked Mulder if any government would throw away decades of research attempting to create a super-soldier. Frohike stared up at the stars and said he’d heard whispers Uncle Sam didn't. Frohike claimed the United States brought the Nazi and Japanese scientists to the US and put them to work in US labs, on US agendas. Now, those scientists had ten years to perfect their science.

 

Mulder didn't think either he or William breathed as Will tried the knob on the metal door at the back of the room. It turned. Mulder looked back, assuring himself he saw what he thought he saw. 

 

It all sounded ridiculous, he remembered Dana telling him as she walked out of his bedroom at The Plaza after the first time they made love. She’d asked Mulder why she would make up a story about mysteriously conceiving Emily instead of picking out a dead husband off some soldier's tombstone.

 

In the next corridor, the cement walls widened and were bordered by row after row something akin to steel card catalogs used in libraries. For a while, Mulder read the labels on the drawers: years beginning with 1947 and a code of letters. 

 

Frohike’s source said the government had files about vaccinations for anyone Frohike thought to ask about: Dana, Emily, Frohike’s sister. Judy Garland. Ed Sullivan. The President, Hoover. Anyone.

 

Files: lots and lots of files. They started to blur as he passed them. Mulder carried Dana and concentrated on keeping his feet moving.

 

Dana said her time in the Army was a joke. The military had a trauma nurse maintaining medical records and storing tissue samples. Dana said she never laid a finger on a patient. Within a few months, she started getting sick and fainting, and the Army doctor said she would have a baby.

 

1949 DKS-ALK.

 

Last year, Frohike claimed Mulder’s file held something not in Frohike’s file: a list of women. Two nights ago, Frohike called Mulder a human weapon. A telepathic, highly-athletic genius who didn’t need to sleep or eat or take time to heal. A killer. Take Mulder’s genetics and add a suitable female, and any government would kill for the result. The scientists wouldn’t need a child - just tissue.

 

1954 DKS-FWM.

 

Eventually the cabinets stopped. So did the lightbulbs overhead, and there was smooth darkness. Mulder’s left shoulder throbbed, and he had no feeling in his left hand. He heard his and Will's feet moving, and Em and Dana's soft breathing; his plan continued working. 

 

"Are you still back there, Dad?"

 

From behind Will, Mulder responded affirmatively, and felt Dana's arms tighten around his neck.  

 

"We're out of hall," Will informed him. "Wherever we were going, we're there."

 

Mulder squatted down and set Dana against something solid. He felt brick instead of cement. He stood and ran his right hand over the wall in search of some way out. "I'm open to suggestions."

 

"I suggest haste," Will answered.

 

Mulder saw their pursuers’ flashlights: pinpoints of light bobbing in the distance.

 

He checked the pistol. The clip felt full. It sounded like more than nine people chased them, though, and Mulder had nowhere for Will, Em, and Dana to get out of the line of fire. Mulder flicked the safety off, just in case.

 

"Great haste," Will amended.

 

Those men would kill Mulder and not think twice, Dana had promised Mulder ages ago, and said she shouldn’t have told Mulder the truth.

 

"Up," Mulder said, as a stray beam of light glanced off a rusted metal bar.

 

"Up?"

 

"Up," Mulder confirmed. He explored the iron rungs fastened into the brick about seven feet from the floor.  

 

As the lights and voices closed in, Will told Emily to hold onto his neck tightly, like a little monkey. William put his hands on the bottom rung and pulled himself up. Mulder listened to his son climb into the darkness above them.

 

"There's a manhole cover," William called. Metal squealed nosily over asphalt. Mulder squinted into the flood of sunlight; particles of dust floated down through the yellow air. The sun seemed foreign, as though days had passed while they were underground. "It's an alleyway. Come on." His son leaned over the manhole and partially blocked out the sun. "Hurry."

 

"Dana, honey, you have to wake up," Mulder ordered, jiggling her. She opened her eyes. "I can't lift us both. I'm going to lift you up. Grab a rung and hang on. I'll be right behind you. Do you understand?"

 

She nodded groggily.

 

As the flashlight beams got close enough to be faint rays instead of pinpricks, Mulder put his arms around Dana’s hips and lifted her up. He felt the weight against his shoulder lessen as she grabbed the bars. Will came back to help, and seconds later they all sat in an alley behind a row of rundown stores and dreary restaurants. 

 

Mulder helped Will slide the manhole cover back into place. He looked around, trying to figure out their location. Someone had knocked over a trashcan, and empty tin cans and limp newspapers littered the alleyway. The place was overwhelmingly real. It smelled of soured milk and wet cardboard and coffee grounds: like used things. 

 

"Third Avenue," Will said. "That's the Third Avenue El, I think." He pointed up. Overhead, the elevated subway tracks cut the morning sky in two. "We're on the Lower East Side."

 

On the oil-stained, gritty asphalt, Dana clutched her daughter, arms shaky but eyes vigilant. She ran her fingers through Em's sweaty blonde hair, trying to sooth the frightened girl, but watched the shadows like a hunter watches the horizon.

 

"We need to keep moving," Mulder said. He switched the pistol from the back waistband of his trousers to the front. In the tunnel below, he heard men's voices shouting in confusion. They weren't far from his and Phoebe's old apartment, and he knew a subway stop close by.

 

Even in New York, people looked at them oddly as they hurried up the steps to the station. Mulder ignored the stares. He found Dana a seat among the morning commuters and put Emily on her lap.

 

The last passengers crowded in. The wooden doors of the train car closed, and they waited. 

 

Move, move, Mulder prayed silently, talking to the driver somewhere far down the tracks. Move, he pleaded.

 

His shoulders and arms trembled. His left hand remained numb, and his right fist felt sore, with the knuckles bruised where he'd hit the hospital guard. Mulder just knocked the guard out, but the goon might or might not get up again, which made Mulder a murderer. Self-defense, Byers would claim, though it wasn't. The need for self-defense ended once Mulder grabbed the goon's gun. The rib-breaking kick and head banging had been for the primal, teeth barring pleasure of it. 

 

The morning Mulder followed Dana home from Mercy Hospital and planted himself on her apartment stoop, she asked if Mulder was a murderer, a rapist, or a thief. If he was married, insane, or a communist.

 

Dana held Emily close as men from the hospital shoved through the workday crowd to get up the metal steps to the platform. Smokey was with them; he pointing angrily at the elevated train line and yelled. Dana flinched back against her seat. Mulder put his hand on the pistol in his waistband, drawing more curious looks.

 

Beside Mulder, Will gripped the overhead rail and stared out the window. A group of men cursed as the subway car slid away from the station. Mulder put his hand on his son's shoulder. Will startled at the touch like a soldier who'd seen one too many horrors. In Will's air-conditioned, private school, freshly starched-and-pressed world, this wasn't happening.  

 

Dana promised Mulder there would be a price. A price to staying with her, to loving her. She’d asked Mulder how much he thought she was worth.

 

Mulder grabbed the handrail as the car lurched forward. As the El settled into its slow, slapping pace along the tracks, he rested his forehead against the round glass window of the door, letting the train take him downtown.

 

On the other side of the glass, Smokey and his men watched from the edge of the platform. Smokey threw down his cigarette. He ground it into the grate with the polished toe of his shoe.

 

Dana had assured Mulder if he kept asking questions, money and power and fame wouldn’t matter. They would get to him. To Mulder, his friends, his family. Nothing and no one stood beyond reach.

 

Dana wove her index finger through Mulder’s belt loop and leaned her cheek against his hip tiredly. He rested his hand on her head, stroking her hair. Mulder’s watch, as he squinted at it, said seven forty-eight.

 

*~*~*~*

 

They needed help. Mulder was too tired to see straight, and Will acted like the morning was a 3-D movie: it looked real because of the funny glasses. Dana normally did great in emergencies - gunshot wounds or small kitchen fires - but she seemed stunned. Dana kept one hand on her flat stomach and one hand on Emily's shoulder.

 

They needed someone who would believe this paranoid story: Nazis or Communists or someone kidnapped women, made them have babies, and used those babies for God alone knew what. A project breeding superior athletes or genius scientists or super-soldiers existed beneath one of the world's best hospitals in the middle of Manhattan. Something about Mulder and Dana, separately but especially in combination, made their genetics vital to this breeding project.

 

They needed someone shadowy. Someone a hair this side of dishonest. Someone with all the right connections to all the wrong kind of people.

 

They needed Melvin Frohike.    

 

Two subway trains and a taxicab later, Mulder pounded on the reinforced steel door of his agent’s downtown loft. 

 

"I have a lovely office across town; just had it redecorated. Opens at nine," Melvin Frohike’s voice called. An eye appeared in the door’s peephole. He opened the door in his undershirt and pajama bottoms, scratching himself irritably. "What now, Mulder?"

 

"Get inside," Mulder ordered. Will ushered Em and Dana out of the freight elevator and inside the vast room. Mulder slipped in after them.   

 

Frohike stopped mid-scratch. "What's-"

 

"We're in trouble. I need to get Dana and Emily someplace safe. And I need Byers. I think I killed someone."

 

"Oh," Frohike answered, as though Mulder asked for mustard on his hamburger rather than ketchup. A less conservative choice, but still within the realm of normal. "Okay. I'll make coffee."  

 

Frohike's place looked like he’d furnished an entire apartment with one room's worth of belongings, with the empty space filled in with broken gadgets and indulgences. In addition to the Coca-Cola machine and jukebox, Frohike recently bought himself a pool table, which also got piled with unidentifiable but likely dysfunctional pieces of mechanical junk. The top floor of the warehouse was three thousand square feet of iron and exposed brick and broken testaments to the Electrical Age Frohike would get around to fixing “any day now.”

 

Will shoved a pile of girlie magazines and a dissected short wave radio off the sofa and sat down. The teenager put his elbows on his knees and covered his face with his hands. In addition to everything else, Will worried about his mother. Mulder wanted to say Phoebe was half-naked, doped to the gills, tied wrist and ankle to a bed, and probably couldn't have been happier, but he didn't. Whatever Phoebe was - and Mulder finally thought up a word for it - she remained Will's mother.

 

Dana took Emily to the bathroom, then sat at the kitchen table and did nothing. The ice dissolved in the glass of water in front of her, and the condensation dripped down the sides to form wet rings on the tabletop. Em wandered to the couch. She curled up against Will and watched everyone with big, frightened eyes. 

 

"Honey," Mulder said hesitantly, as Frohike called Byers' office. "Do you remember something we saw on 'Alfred Hitchcock?'" Mulder stood behind Dana and stroked his fingertips over her shoulders. "A man breaks in a house and attacks a woman. Her husband returns home, and the policeman tells the husband to take her away for a while, take her someplace for the night until she can calm down. So they're driving to the hotel, the husband and the wife, and the wife says she sees the man who attacked her walking on the sidewalk. The husband stops, gets out, and beats the man to death, and gets back in the car and keeps driving, thinking he's avenged her. A few minutes later, the wife points out a different man and insists he attacked her. And another man and another, and the husband realizes she's pointing out every man they pass. That's how I feel. I'll kill'em, honey, but I need you to tell me who the real bad guys are."    

 

Dana leaned her head back against his stomach and closed her eyes.

 

"What am I, Dana?" Mulder asked. "Is it a genetic fluke or is it something else? Did Samantha get lost playing in the woods one day, or is she one of those women underneath the hospital?"

 

"I don't know. I don't know anything about Samantha. A year and a half ago, I thought the only special things about you were you could hit a baseball and I loved you."

 

"When did you realize there was su- su- something else?"

 

"When I woke up in the hospital to my mother crying and the police explaining I was being arrested for having an abortion. The last things I remembered were you kissing me goodbye as you left and a knock at the door a few minutes later. I hadn't even realized I was going to have a baby. Babies," she corrected.

 

"Wanna see me move a pencil with the power of my mind?" he said, caressing her cheek.

 

"In the Army, I paid attention to what I filed. Most of it made no sense, but some did. I guess they expected me to be so humiliated I'd give up Emily and walk away with my tail between my legs, but I didn't. Those phrases I asked Mr. Frohike to put in the paper last Thanksgiving, after you were shot: those were the names of project files: Blue Book, Paper Clip, Majestic Twelve. 'A majestic December day,'" she clarified, and stared at the empty kitchen wall. "I let them know I knew or had something. If they hurt you or Will, I'd make what I knew public. If they left us alone, I'd stay quiet."

 

"Was that what the man was looking for in our house? Something he thought you had?" 

 

She took a tiny sip of water. "I think so."  

 

"You said you weren't sure the doctors were helping Emily. Was that true? I was the one who started taking her to all those doctors. She started with a sore throat, and nosebleeds, and kept getting worse. Maybe they were making her sicker and I didn't realize it. The Nazis used to do that - see how long it took babies to die of exposure or typhoid. Is that what's happening?"

 

"I don't know," Dana answered irritably.  

 

"Why did they try to kill me?"

 

"Mulder, I don't have all your answers. Probably because they had what they wanted from you; they had the babies, and you'd become a liability. Because I told you about Emily, and you kept talking to Agent Dales. Put you and Agent Dales in the same room long enough and you two might figure out what’s happening. What They're doing. Because if you had believed me, and stood up and announced you believed me, people might listen."

 

"I do believe you. I know what I saw, Scully." 

 

She picked up the glass and held it against her forehead, then her cheek.

 

Mulder stroked her hair.

 

"I'm sorry," Dana said after a few seconds. "I never meant to hurt you. You or Will. I knew I was being selfish, and you can't imagine how many times I tried to make myself walk away."

 

"John Byers is on his way," Frohike announced from his desk across the room. "I need to make a few more calls, and we're ready to go. I need to have Langly transfer some money, Mulder. A large amount."

 

"That's fine. Whatever you need."

 

Dana's chair squeaked against the dirty linoleum. She covered her mouth with her hand and bolted for the bathroom. Her glass spilled. Mulder reached for a dishtowel to mop off the table before the water hit the floor and made a clean spot.

 

Will looked up as she passed, glanced at his father, and lowered his head again. The bathroom door slammed, and the sound of retching began a second later.

 

"Congratulations," Frohike said. "You said you were getting married in June, but I didn't realize...  How far along?"

 

"Not very." Mulder wiped off the kitchen table, scrubbing off some jelly smears while he was at it.

 

"That changes things; it ups the ante. They'll come after that baby."

 

Mulder nodded tiredly and tossed the damp towel in the sink. "They tried. That smoking man - he knows."

 

Frohike nodded. "I'll have Langly bring a two hundred. He'll shuffle your accounts around to cover his tracks so it doesn't look like you funded this. He doesn't exactly launder money for the mob, but occasionally he spot-cleans it."

 

"Two hundred dollars?"

 

"Two hundred thousand," Frohike corrected.

 

"Dollars?" Mulder repeated.

 

Dana's new Chrysler cost four grand, and Mulder’s top-of-the-line Cadillac had been $8000. A nice house cost twenty-grand, and Mulder paid $50,000 for the mansion in Georgetown. His apartment at The Plaza hadn't cost two-hundred thousand dollars. His last year with the Yankees, he made $120,000 plus bonuses, before taxes; adjusted for inflation, Mulder’s paycheck in 1954 had surpassed Babe Ruth’s in 1934 and made front page headlines. Winning the World Series games was kind to Mulder, and so were the ads and endorsements. He'd made money playing ball and he invested it, but with lawyers and alimony and tuition for Will and Dana and medical bills and two houses in two cities, Mulder had a lot of outgo lately and no significant infusions of new cash to pad the nest egg.

 

"I need to make Dana and Emily disappear," Frohike explained. "Forever. If you want to be sure they're safe, they have to disappear from the US Government. Hell, they have to disappear off the face of the planet. There's a baby coming... That takes a lot of money. It might take more."

 

"You're gonna need to put my face on a Wheaties box again."

 

Dana emerged from the bathroom but turned and hurried back inside. 

 

"Dad?"

 

"Give her a minute. Are you okay, son?"

 

In answer, Will smirked. He put his face back down on his palms again. The boy shook his head and laughed nervously.

 

The toilet flushed a second time. The bathroom door opened.

 

"I need to talk to Mulder. Alone," Dana said as all the men pretended they hadn't noticed her morning sickness.

 

Since Frohike's apartment was one huge room, Mulder followed Dana to the hallway. He felt like a kid on his way to the principal's office.

 

"If you're about to tell me you're going to have a baby, give me a minute so I can act surprised," he kidded tensely. Mulder leaned against the wall beside the freight elevator. He put his hands in his pockets. "Okay, I'm ready."

 

"Mulder- I, uh, God, I'm not sure how to say this."

 

"Try, 'Mulder, I'm going to have a baby. We're going to have a baby.' I have my stupidest grin ready."

 

"But I shouldn't be. I told you."

 

Something about her tone made him swallow. According to her, she had no memory of some of her pregnancy with Emily. The UFO novels Agent Dales used to lend Mulder called it 'missing time.'

 

"Do you think someone's..." Mulder ran his scorched tongue over his teeth. "Done something to you?"

 

"Yes, but the someone would be you."

 

He slouched and examined the cracked tile mosaic on the floor.

 

"I didn't mean to say it like that. Mulder, I know you want more children. Will's almost an adult and Emily's... I don't know what we'll do once it's the two of us, and I don't think you do, either."

 

"We'll-"

 

"Don't interrupt. Please. Let me speak. This shouldn't be happening. I've seen the doctor's report, and this shouldn't be happening. Maybe there's something a specialist could do and we'd get a miracle, but- If I thought there was any chance of me carrying a baby to term, don't you think I would have told you?"

 

"I don't understand."

 

"This could be an ectopic pregnancy - a pregnancy somewhere outside the uterus. If it is, that's dangerous and I'll need surgery. And the baby won’t survive. Or, if it's not, if the baby's growing where it's supposed to be, the uterine walls have significant scar tissue. The cervix is weakened. Spontaneous abortion is a real possibility." Mulder must have looked horrified, because she clarified, "A miscarriage."

 

"The cervix is the-"

 

"The 'ouch, not so deep' part," she confirmed, and Mulder nodded. "The cervix has to stay closed as the baby grows in the womb or else labor starts too early. The baby comes too soon to live. Just- please stop looking at me with those expectant eyes and seeing maternity clothes. Just because we've conceived a baby doesn't mean we're- It doesn't mean I can manage to have one."

 

He checked that mosaic on the floor again. "If you're sure - absolutely sure - do you want to stop this? Frohike knows good doctors. I know he does; he's arranged things for Phoebe more than once." Mulder found a good place on the inside of his lip to gnaw. "I don't know where we're going or what's going to happen. Those men at the hospital will take this baby if they can find us. Take this baby and not care what happens to you, like before. Even if They don’t find us, I don't want you mu-miscarrying somewhere we can't get to a doctor. I- tell me what you want, honey."

 

"What do you think I want?"

 

He shrugged, afraid to even speculate. This morning was his cabinet of nightmares: facing Emily’s death, Will being in danger, Dana being right about the government experiments. Mulder coming face-to-face with the freakish killer he was bred to be, and yet another woman carrying his child who needed an abortionist, not an obstetrician.

 

"I want to try,” Dana said. “But I want you to know the possibilities."

 

Mulder nodded, not risking looking up.

 

"All right?"

 

"All right," he agreed, and followed her back inside the loft.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder had a dream of the cold, black, white, gray, and red variety. He saw red in his dreams; that was how he knew it existed.

 

"She just turned four," Dana Scully answered. In the dream, she buttoned the top button of her wool coat over her nurse’s uniform as she walked beside Mulder. Her head barely reached his shoulder. 

 

Mulder hadn’t called her “Scully,” of course, or even “Dana.” Back then, he said "Mrs. Scully" or sometimes jokingly "Nurse Scully."

 

He dreamed of November 1953, weeks after Mulder quit playing ball, and seven days after Will cracked him in the head with a baseball bat and sent him to the Mercy Hospital Emergency Room for stitches. Not two months later, Mulder and Dana made love for the first time in his apartment at The Plaza. A few weeks later, she'd be missing. Five months from that morning, police would find Dana near death in a railroad switching station in D.C., and his world would crumble. A year from that morning, Mulder laid in a Georgetown alley in a pool of blood while Dana fought to keep his heart beating. But that morning, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully were merely two strangers on what passed for a first date.

 

"My son's fourteen, almost fifteen,” Mulder told her. “It changes things. It changes everything." He watched Emily run down the boardwalk in front of them. Except for the wind and the distant waves pounding the beach, their feet on the weathered planks and their voices made the only sounds.

 

The Atlantic air caressed Mulder’s face with its icy fingers and drained color from the world like an artist running water over his pallet. The sun lurked behind the clouds. It cast long shadows as Coney Island stretched, yawned, and hesitantly woke to winter. Above them, the sky looked dense and heavy, threatening snow. Mulder loved Coney Island because he wasn't the biggest freak of nature there. He spent a great deal of energy trying to appear normal.

 

"You having a young child- Both of us having children. That makes everything automatically-" He hunted for the right phrase. "Less casual."

 

"Yes, it does." Dana kept her hands deep in her pockets. "You may run, if you like."

 

The brisk wind colored her cheeks scarlet and blew her lovely auburn hair out of the neat bun she had it in. Dana kept tucking the strands behind her ears but the wind whipped them around her face again, tormenting her. Below her coat, the fluttering skirt of her uniform had a red spatter of blood on the hem.

 

"I don't run; I have a note from my doctor. I was saying - seeing someone when children are involved - the stakes are higher. It's complicated. It isn't fair to be casual."

 

"Are you accustomed to casual?"

 

He considered the intoxicated blur of the past months. "I've tried it."

 

"I'm sure you have."

 

"It's overrated." Mulder hesitated, but asked, "Did you like Aiello's? I know it's odd, but-"

 

"No, I liked it. It was different," she said, sounding cautious. "Emily loved it. I didn't think you were serious about the circus freaks, but all those people are sideshow performers, aren’t they?"

 

"Yes. It's a favorite of the locals. If you want to eat breakfast with a tattooed man and a bearded lady, that's the place. William loves it, too. We go for pancakes on Saturdays if I can get him out of bed before noon."

 

"Is that your son? William?"

 

"Will." The word formed a white cloud in front of his lips. "Wonder Boy."

 

"May I ask..."

 

Mulder stopped walking. He leaned against the wooden railing above the empty beach. "Will lives with his mother, near me, in Manhattan during the school year. They lived in London during the war. That's where his mother’s from, and they go back during the summer. We've been divorced a long time. That's not what I wanted, but that's what happened. My father died earlier this year; my mother lives in Boston. I grew up there with a younger sister named Samantha. I played professional baseball from 1939 until this season, in between the war and a few injuries. I guess you could say I’ve had some trouble adjusting to retirement, but I'm doing better. No guarantees, but I'm trying. Again, the stakes are high."

 

"Did you meet your ex-wife during the war?"

 

"No, we met while I was in school. What about you?" Mulder asked, refocusing the discussion. "What's your life story?"

 

"You're looking at it," Dana answered. Her eyes focused on Emily. "I went to college, became a trauma nurse and, in what my mother thought was an act of rebellion, joined the Army Nurses Corp. Then Emily came. Her father's gone. Now it's the two of us."           

 

"That's the whole story?" he asked.

 

"No.” She glanced up at him. “Was that your whole story?" She turned away and called for her daughter to come back.

 

"No," he mumbled, following her down the boardwalk. The hinges creaked as a few garish booths opened, and the cotton candy machine began to spin pink silk threads. "No, that's not nearly the whole story."

 

"I didn't think it was," she answered. Dana stooped down to tighten the strings on her daughter's hood.  

 

"Are you a daddy, Mr. Mulder?" Emily asked pointedly, looking over her mother's shoulder at him. Her cheeks were pink and round. In his dream, the child radiated energy and health. Her joints didn’t hurt. Her nose didn’t bleed. Her mother didn’t cry.

 

Mulder remembered answering, "I am. I have a son named William."

 

"Is he big?"

 

"He's about-" Mulder held his hand even with his eyebrows. "This big."

 

Her mouth formed a silent ‘wow.’ "We don't have a daddy. Or a William."

 

"Oh, well, uh...  You don't have a lot of room in your apartment. You have a cat, though. He's probably less trouble."

 

"He's a stray."

 

He glanced at down Mrs. Scully, who took in this dialog with an amused glint in her eyes. "Help me," he pleaded.

 

"Mommy says he's a Tom Cat," Emily continued. "And I'll be sorry. She lets him in, though."

 

"Your mommy is a smart lady."

 

Dana didn't respond, but she smiled as she stood up. Mulder put his hand cautiously on her back as he turned her toward the car.

 

"I need to be back in Manhattan for a meeting in an hour," he explained. The gray boards creaked under their feet. "But I'd like to take you to dinner Friday," Mulder said. "We'll go someplace nice. Someplace without dwarfs."

 

"You're not going to get to your meeting on time."

 

"They'll wait. It’s not AA; these men work for me."

 

"Emily and I could take the subway home," she offered, walking beside him. "You'd be less late."

 

"Am I doing that badly?"

 

She stopped. She looked at him and laughed, a sound out of place in the stark surroundings. "Aside from getting me fired, following me home like some lunatic, coercing me into going out with you by charming my daughter, buying me pancakes in a restaurant full of circus freaks, dragging me for a walk in the Antarctic, and giving me the Reader’s Digest happily-condensed version of your life story - no, I'd say you're doing well."

 

Mulder stared at his shoes. He counted this morning as a fine time, but it sounded awful when she said it that way.

 

"I almost didn't go back to the emergency room this morning," he told his shoes. "After I asked you about AA... I decided yesterday I would have my doctor take the stitches out, but I couldn't sleep. I went for a drive, checked on my son, and I started thinking about you."

 

"I almost wasn't there," she told him. "My shift should have ended at midnight."

 

Mulder put his hands in his coat pockets and studied the ocean in the distance. "Must be fate," he said lightly.

 

He hunched his shoulders, waiting to be rebuffed.

 

"Fine. Dinner Friday,” she promised. “Take me home before I pass out from exhaustion and the police find my frozen body under the boardwalk."

 

Mulder looked at her. The wind blew her auburn hair again. "You're sure?"

 

"No, I'm completely unsure. But fate is fate," she answered. Dana carried Emily on her hip as they walked down the broad, endless Boardwalk. Hours before the off-season crowd arrived, Mulder and Dana and little Emily seemed like the only people on the planet.

 

They seemed so small and insignificant beside the vast ocean.

 

It was a nice dream.

 

*~*~*~*

 

"There he is," Frohike’s voice said sharply. Mulder raised his head from the kitchen table and wiped a few minutes' sleep from his eyes. Frohike pointed out the window to the street below. "Let's go."

 

John Byers drove a pristine, baby blue Studebaker station wagon with whitewall tires, chrome bumpers, and a luggage rack. And he drove it slowly. Byers waited at the corner below Frohike's building for the light to change. His turn single flashed patiently. Turning right on red made Byers nervous.

 

"Don't give him that," Mulder said as Frohike handed Will a pistol. "He doesn't know how to use it."

 

"I do," William protested. "Frohike showed me."

 

"When?" Mulder asked.

 

"When Emily had pneumonia," Frohike answered, as he expertly loaded a rifle old enough to have seen action in the First World War. "You said 'do something nice with Will' and 'I'll owe you.' You still owe me, by the way."

 

"Fine. Whatever. Scully, are you okay?" Mulder shoved the goon's handgun in his waistband and pushed the button for the freight elevator.

 

Dana picked up Emily and nodded.

 

As the big elevator slowly lowered the five of them to the ground floor, the sun shimmered through the black metal grating. The world continued turning except it seemed cheapened, like a dime store ring once the shine wore off and the ugly core showed through.

 

"Beside Wollman's ice-skating rink in Central Park," Dana said, staring at the metal grate door. "In locker thirteen. The key is inside Emily's Kitty: the stuffed one. Take what's inside the locker to Mr. Skinner at the FBI. Tell him you want to make a deal with the smoking man."

 

"What's inside the locker?" Mulder asked as the elevator reached the bottom floor.

 

"The truth," Dana answered. "Pandora's box."

 

Byers parked exactly eighteen inches from the curb as the elevator doors opened to the parking garage. He locked the station wagon and hurried toward them, bringing two Macy's shopping bags.

 

"What is this?” Byers demanded. “Mr. Langly dropped these off at my office. Why am I carrying this much cash? What is this about you killing someone, Mulder? My secretary called the hospital; there's no record of any disturbance this morning. Are you insane? I'm supposed to be in a meeting."

 

John Byers was to 'paranoia' and 'aggression' what 'mild' was to 'Tabasco.' Confronted with a non-legal crisis, he jabbered facts and statistics like a frantic chipmunk. Susanne had the cool head of the two; the Army should have let her serve in World War II.

 

Frohike took the shopping bags and put them on the passenger-side floor of his new truck.

 

"Dad, I have school," Will blurted. “I can’t leave.”

 

"You can stay with Byers family," Mulder promised. "Don't give Susanne a hard time. You can go to school, check on your mother. As soon as it's safe, I'll contact you. All right, Will? You're coming up on seventeen years old; you-"

 

"Wait, why is he staying with Byers?" Frohike interrupted as Byers’ mouth hung open. "Where are you going, Mulder?"

 

"I'm going with Dana and-"

 

"No, you're not,” Frohike informed him. “I can hide Dana and Emily; I can't hide you. You're Fox Mulder; I put your face on baseball cards and magazine covers around the world. I could send you to Siberia and you'd still stick out like a sore thumb."

 

"Who's going to Siberia?" Byers asked loudly.

 

"No one," a male voice answered from the shadows behind them. A handsome, dark-haired, familiar-looking man stepped out. He carried a sawed-off shotgun and aimed it at Dana. "No one's going anywhere except the ladies. Dana, let's go. Bring the girl."

 

"Not a chance." Mulder raised Goon's pistol. Dana and Emily had been last out of the elevator, so they stood directly between Mulder and the gunman. Dana pulled Emily against her chest and didn’t move.

 

"My gun's bigger than yours."

 

"Freud would say there's a reason for that,” Mulder said. “You're the man who was in our house. Who the hell are you? What do you want? Are you Alex Krycek?"

 

Will stood closer to Krycek, and a few feet to the right of Dana and Emily. William raised Frohike’s handgun; he looked dangerous.

 

"Don't move, boy," Krycek snapped. He pointed his shotgun at Will and back at Dana and Emily.

 

Will stopped. On the other side of his new truck, beside Byers, Frohike cocked his old service rifle.

 

Mulder's finger twitched in anticipation. The flesh molded to the steel of the trigger. This man was a Them. Mulder wanted Alex Krycek alive long enough to beat some answers out of him. Then he'd kill him.

 

The stalemate continued as Krycek seemed to consider his options.

 

"Miss by one degree and you hit Dana," Krycek warned Mulder. "That's a two-for-one mistake. Three, counting the girl. Do you think you're that good a shot?"

 

Mulder nodded silently.

 

"The boy won't shoot," Krycek announced.

 

"I reckon the boy will," William responded icily, still holding the pistol at the ready. "You shot my father, you bastard."

 

Krycek looked around.

 

"What do you want?" Mulder aimed past Dana's shoulder and directly at Krycek's head. "Who are you?"

 

"I'm what your Vater did in his spare time. Consider me the next step," he said sarcastically.

 

"You leave them alone," Dana ordered him. "They aren't part of this."

 

She lowered Emily to the ground. With one hand, Dana tried to push the girl behind her, toward Mulder. Emily clung to her mother.

 

"She's grown," Krycek said. "Since last year, she's grown."

 

"She's not yours," Dana responded, still trying to shield her daughter.

 

"I have papers saying differently. Come with me," Krycek encouraged her. "Make this easy for them. Mulder and the boy – I’ll make sure they won't remember any of this."

 

Mulder saw Will inhale and steady the pistol. Krycek swung the barrel of the sawed-off shotgun toward William again.

 

"Stop, Will!" Dana commanded. "Don't. Please. Lower the gun, back away and, and go to your father. Do it, Will. Emily, go with Bub. Mulder, take them and get out of here."

 

"Not a chance," Mulder repeated. "Emily's not yours, Krycek. Dana's not going with you. End of discussion."

 

Krycek studied Mulder for a moment. "Can you tell when Dana’s thinking about me?" he asked. "I bet you can't, Mulder. I've watched you with women. The blonde, last spring? She reminded you of Dana, didn't she? Big blue eyes, and sweet and innocent as apple pie." He whistled softly. "You should have gone back for seconds. Oh, I remember; you did."

 

Krycek's shotgun stayed pointed at Dana and Emily, but his eyes darted around the parking garage, watching for something. Reinforcements, Mulder suspected.

 

"The brunette before Halloween, a few years back? I set that up myself." Krycek glanced at Will. "Sorry son, but your father's more cooperative if we drop a little something into his Scotch. Diana's not bad, either. We paid her to be very, uh, enthusiastic." He smiled like he knew a secret. "You're welcome. And I've watched you with Dana. Those were good times-"

 

A light bulb exploded behind Krycek. Everyone except Mulder jumped.

 

Ask about Phoebe, Mulder's hind brain whispered. He should ask if Phoebe was a set-up, too.

 

"Can you tell, Mulder?" Krycek asked again. "When you’re fucking her and she's thinking of me? I bet Dana told you she doesn't even remember."

 

"Shoot him," Dana's voice said.

 

Mulder's gun fired. A bullet wound appeared in the center of Krycek's forehead. Mulder pivoted and fired three times into the inky shadows at the back of the parking garage. His bullets met flesh, and three unseen bodies dropped to the cement floor a second after Krycek's.

 

Will and Frohike turned and aimed, but clearly saw nothing in the darkness to fire at.

 

Mulder lowered the pistol. The three men were dead. He didn't need to go check.

 

Emily crouched down behind her mother, cowering. The girl pressed her hands over her ears. Dana stared at Mulder as if she'd seen a monster.

 

Forty-eight hours ago, Mulder asked Frohike what it meant if Mulder sensed things other people didn’t. What that made Mulder. Frohike’s assessment – “dangerous” - had been the correct response.

 

"Jesus Christ!" Byers' voice called from behind Frohike's truck, sounding like a hyperactive metronome. "You killed them! All of them," Byers pronounced, making a brilliant observation of the obvious.

 

"Let's go," Frohike barked. He hurried around to the driver's side door of his truck. "If they're here, my phone must be tapped. There will be more men coming. Byers, take care of the bodies."

 

"The hell I will. I'm a lawyer. I’m a senior partner. This is aiding and abetting multiple murders. This is the type of thing lawyers specifically are not supposed to do."

 

Mulder still clutched the warm gun. He squatted down and picked Emily up. Mulder set the girl on his left hip and told her everything was all right.

 

This wasn't real.

 

This was not happening. 

 

"Get in," Frohike ordered, and started his truck. "Miss Scully, Emily - now. Hurry."

 

In slow motion, Mulder opened the passenger-side door. Emily crawled into the cab as Frohike also assured her it was okay. Emily liked to sit in the middle or on the driver’s lap so she could help shift gears. Mulder let her do it in the Porsche.

 

"Mulder?" Dana said numbly.

 

"Get in." Mulder held the door open. “You have to go.”

 

"I want to go to a movie," she blurted. "To one of those awful science fiction movies you like. We'll sit up front with Emily and eat popcorn. Will can sit in the back with his latest girlfriend and pretend he doesn't know us."

 

"Okay, we'll do that," Mulder answered automatically. His nose still stung from the gunpowder.

 

"You said you'd teach me how to hit a baseball. You said you would, but you never did."

 

"We'll do that too." He guided Dana into the passenger seat. "We'll get another chance, someday. I promise. Right now, you have to go."

 

"I can't-" she started, but ran out of breath, as if too terrified to speak.

 

On impulse, Mulder put his hand low on her abdomen. He exhaled and relaxed his mind. Dana didn't move, and for a second the rest of the topsy-turby, menacing universe stopped existing. "He's fine," Mulder told her softly. He smiled in wonder. He hadn't been certain he could do it. "He's right where he should be, and he's fine," Mulder promised her. "Try to keep him safe."

 

Dana looked at him with blue eyes the size of silver dollars.

 

He stepped back and closed the passenger-side door. "But you keep you and Emily safe, not matter what."

 

"You aren't joking about moving that pencil, are you?" she whispered.

 

Mulder shook his head. He'd slipped a dozen times in the last few months - bringing Dana a drink of water she only thought of, breaking the panes of glass, answering a question she hadn't asked aloud - but he didn't think Dana had seen him move anything. Making lightbulbs explode was new, though.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said honestly.

 

“Mulder-” Dana said, and he saw the swirl of images in her head: her watching him sleep, watching him read to Emily and play catch with Will. She saw herself embracing Mulder. Dancing, making love with him. He saw Dana examining her reflection in the bathroom mirror this morning, checking her flat abdomen. She couldn’t do this, she thought. Whatever Mulder was, she couldn’t leave him and Will. Mulder felt waves of guilt and fear from her. She did this to them, he heard her thinking, and she abandoned them.

 

“Get to the locker,” she managed to remind him. “Get the film.”

 

"I will. I'll be okay," Mulder lied, keeping his hand on the door handle. "We'll be okay. We’re big boys. Don't worry about us."

 

Dana stared at him through the glass window.

 

The truck started backing away. Mulder followed a few steps, but let go of the door handle.

 

He saw Dana frantically insist Frohike stop. She tried to twist the expensive engagement ring off her finger.

 

Keep it, Mulder mouthed silently, knowing Dana heard him inside her mind. She heard his voice as clearly as he heard her thoughts. Come back, he told her.

 

Police sirens wailed in the distance.

 

"Dad," Will’s voice said from behind him.

 

Mulder had forgotten Will and Byers were still there.

 

Wondering where all the air on the planet went, Mulder turned and saw William pointing at Krycek's body. The corpse dissolved into a yellow and green puddle and smoked as though a cloud of lime Jell-O powder formed over it. "What is that?"

 

"Oh my God," Byers mumbled.

 

As Mulder, Will, and Byers stared at the melting body, Mulder heard tires squeal. Frohike must have run the red light outside the parking garage. 

 

Within seconds, nothing remained of Alex Krycek except the sawed-off shotgun, a few scraps of leather, and Mulder's father's wristwatch. The bodies in the back of the garage were the same: nothing left but three military rifles, two side arms, and the sole of one man's shoe. No faces, no wallets, no dog tags, no wedding bands, no evidence or identification of any sort.

 

Will and Byers backed away, squinting and wiping their eyes. Mulder stood there, not bothered.

 

Nothing remained of anything. Everything turned to mist and far-fetched stories and drifted away in the morning sun.

 

Mulder's new watch read seven forty-eight, but it sounded suspiciously silent. His father's wristwatch, when Mulder picked it up, said ten-o-five. He tapped Bill Mulder's Rolex with his finger and held it up to his ear, certain it had stopped as well.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder wanted Will to see an eye doctor, but William refused. The boy’s eyes looked less red, and Mulder had seen enough doctors for one day. And since explaining the fumes causing that redness came from a dissolving green somewhat-alien body risked landing Mulder in a padded room with Phoebe, Mulder hadn’t insisted. Instead, he offered dinner at Aiello's.

 

So far, they’d been at Coney Island an hour and still sat in the nearly empty parking lot. Mulder and Will had yet to make it out of the car, let alone to the restaurant.

 

By the time he and Will returned to The Plaza, They - the omnipresent 'Them' - had ransacked the apartment. The omnipresent Them stole Mulder’s World Series rings but hadn’t found what mattered. Kitty - poor, battered stuffed Kitty - still lay on the floor of the living room. Real Kitten crouched beneath Will’s bed, hissing and refusing to come out. The police found no fingerprints. The lock hadn’t been jimmied. The Plaza staff noticed nothing out of the ordinary. No one had any idea how someone burgled an apartment on a private floor of one of the world’s most conscientious hotels.

 

The key Mulder cut out of stuffed Kitty fit a small locker in Central Park. That locker contained a single metal container of film bearing the label 'Roswell, New Mexico 1947: Project Blue Book.' And the film- Dana told Mulder the truth. She had Pandora’s Box captured on Kodak 16 mm celluloid film.

 

Will sprawled in the back seat of the new Chrysler. He held the filmstrip up to the glowing sunset and squinted at it again. "Could be a girl with birth defects," the boy proposed. He unwound a few more inches of film from the reel. "Some syndrome Dana would know."

 

"Could be," Mulder responded neutrally, though it wasn’t. Whatever creature the doctors in the film examined on their steel table, even with his reading glasses and a flashlight, Mulder couldn’t identify it.

 

As the evening grew darker, Coney Island came alive. Lights outlined the roller coaster and Ferris wheel like patterns of white stars against the black velvet of space. The sticky-sweet smell of cotton candy and funnel cakes drifted down the boardwalk, mixing with the old salt fragrance of the sea.

 

In the front seat, Mulder slouched with his back against the driver's side door and his feet hanging out the passenger side window. He watched as another airplane took off. The plane tilted away and disappeared into the last of the sunset, ending the movie in Technicolor splendor.

 

"Could some sort of dead, hairless monkey," Will postulated.

 

"Could be. It could be one of those dead, hairless monkey autopsy films the government doesn't want us to see." Mulder lowered his feet and pivoted. He opened the driver's door. A telephone booth sat at the edge of the parking lot. "I'll be back," he told Will, who continued staring at the strip of film.

 

Mulder hesitated before he picked up the receiver. Once he did, he inhaled, dropped his nickel in the slot, and dialed before he lost his nerve. 

 

"It's Mulder," he said when Dana's mother answered. "I was wondering if you'd heard from Dana. I'm not sure where she is."

 

Mrs. Scully said she hadn't seen or heard from her daughter, and she asked evenly what was wrong. Mulder had worked at getting in Mrs. Scully’s good graces lately: driving her on errands, carrying groceries. He played host when she came to see Emily. He sat through Mass and a Sunday dinner and a lecture on living in sin. In the past two months, Dana’s mother stopped looking at Mulder like she wanted to castrate him, but her jury remained out on her future son-in-law: the divorced, alcoholic, out-of-work, womanizing, half-Jewish ex-baseball player with the hooligan teenage son.

 

Mulder took another breath and delivered his lines. "We had a fight. Dana took Emily and took off. She's pretty sore at me."

 

"Why would that be?" Margaret Scully asked icily.

 

"I don't want her to do something stupid again," Mulder answered. "I'll fix things, but I have to find her."

 

He heard a long silence on the other end of the telephone line. To hell with this shadowy government hybrid-breeding project; Bill Scully would kill Mulder if Margaret Scully didn’t do it first.

 

"You'll fix things?" she echoed.

 

"It's no problem. I mean, I'm not marrying her just yet, but I'm not abandoning her.” He stabbed at the corner of the telephone booth with the polished toe of his shoe. “I care about Dana. She's great fun." 

 

Mulder bit his lip until the coppery taste of blood trickled onto his tongue. He thanked God for a protective mother's tunnel vision, and he felt relieved the line went dead.

 

Out of curiosity, Mulder listened and heard a second click a few seconds later. They had listened. Mission accomplished.

 

Mulder walked back to the car on the long, shadowy boardwalk with his hands in his pockets. The ocean seemed endless, as though nothing stood between him and the end of the world. Near the car, he paused to watch as another airplane flew over. Mulder stared at the plane’s lights until it faded from sight.

 

"That's the seven-ten to London," his son informed him. "There's also a redeye at eleven. The last flight for D.C. took off about half an hour ago. They could have been on that one, too."

 

William had put the film stock away. The boy sat in the back seat, watching the darkening sky with red-rimmed eyes.

 

"Dana and Emily could be anywhere, Will, and it's nowhere you or I would ever think to look. Frohike will send them someplace safe; that's all we need to know. If we know where they are, we could put them in danger."

 

William toyed with the metal film canister. "You gave her a lot of money, Dad."

 

"Don't worry about it." 

 

"I do worry about it,” William said. “Taking care of Emily had to cost a bundle, plus my mother, plus what you gave Dana, plus I'll have university-"

 

"University? Will, I didn't budget college; I budgeted a team of defense attorneys," Mulder teased. Still standing in the parking lot, he folded his arms and leaned against the door of the Chrysler. "Have faith in the Yankees, my son."

 

Will looked at his father curiously. 

 

"The Yankees made me a good offer to come back for one more season."

 

"You don't want to play anymore," Will pointed out. “You said it hurts, and that was before you got shot.”

 

Mulder didn't answer.

 

As Mulder opened the driver's door, light glinted off a silver dime store lipstick case that had fallen beside the seat. Mulder picked it up. The case still felt warm, like the sidewalk after dusk. He sat down tiredly, holding the lipstick case in his palm.

 

"Dad, should I ask about the baby? Or if Emily will be okay? Or about all those men you shot, and why they bled green and melted?"

 

"No, you probably shouldn't," Mulder told him. 

 

"Do you think Dana’s coming back?"

 

"Tomorrow, I'll take that film to Walter Skinner and see if it's worth what I think it's worth. I'll see if he can help me make a deal."

 

Will opened the metal case again and unfurled a few loops of film off the reel. "Is it real?" he asked. "What are these doctors autopsying?"

 

An alien. The Nazi and Japanese scientists weren't breeding superior humans anymore; they tried to breed alien-human hybrids.    

 

"It doesn't matter,” Mulder said. “It's either the government-created a hoax to make people think aliens exist, or it's the real deal. Either way, I bet whoever made it doesn't want the story on the front page of the newspaper."

 

"Dana had it the whole time?"

 

"Yes. Dana had it the whole time."

 

Mulder opened the glove box. He put Dana's lipstick beside a spare set of keys she'd left there. She had five keys made for the new car so she stood some chance of finding one.

 

"Sixty-eight Saturday afternoons: that's not nearly enough," Mulder said softly, talking to himself more than Will. He draped his arm across the front seat and around nothing. "Nineteen months; that's four hundred and seventy-six days, but sixty-eight Saturday afternoons. Two Christmas's but one summer."

 

Will leaned forward, toward Mulder.

 

"It's not enough," Mulder repeated. "I keep thinking this isn't happening, it's a bad dream. I'm going to wake up and they'll be here." He looked up at the dark sky again and back at Will. "You're here. You wanna get a milkshake? See a movie?"

 

"I'm not seven-years-old anymore. You can’t buy me a strawberry milkshake and make it better, Daddy-O." William paused. “Dad, that man, Alex Krycek-”

 

Mulder interrupted. "What about ‘Killers from Space’ or ‘Invaders from Mars.’ ‘The Creature Walks Among Us.’ Or simply ‘Them!’"

 

William put his chin on his hands like a tired child. Mulder knew the boy didn’t want to see a movie or have dinner or get a milkshake; William wanted to go home. Check on his mother. But Mulder couldn’t take Will back to The Plaza, where all the phones had bugs and the mirrors had camera lenses behind them. He couldn’t face the empty house in Georgetown, either.

 

Mulder rumpled his son’s dark hair.

 

William didn’t bother telling his father to stop or jerking away. Instead, he said quietly, “That smoking man: he said I was nothing. ‘The boy is nothing.’”

 

“He means you’re not like Emily,” Mulder assured him. “You won’t get sick.”

 

“He means I’m not like you, either. You killed those men, Dad,” Will said, his voice deeper, but otherwise sounding like a seven-year-old. “Or whatever they were. You shot them.”

 

Mulder nodded. “I did. And if any more men - or whatever they were - come after me or you or Emily or Dana, I’ll kill them, too.”

 

William bit his lower lip and nodded back.

 

High overheard, something flickered in the night sky; it flared bright white and vanished. A jet plane or a falling star. The Soviet Union claimed to have a satellite, and the US had one in development, but neither nation had launched anything into orbit.

 

Mulder watched the Heavens, certain something watched back.

 

“Tomorrow, we’ll practice with a rifle and a pistol,” Mulder told his son. “Make sure you know how to use a weapon if you need to. We’ll find a place with good doctors to help your mother. Tomorrow, I’ll take the film to Mr. Skinner. Try to make a deal.” He glanced at the sky over Coney Island again, and toward Manhattan. “We’ll find someplace else to live. A house in the country, maybe. With a yard, beside a lake. I think Dana and Emily would like that.”

 

“When they come back?”

 

“Yes.”

 

William’s chin still rested on his hands on the top of the front seat.

 

Mulder still looked up into the abyss of space.

 

“Tonight, we could get a pizza pie and go see ‘Earth Versus the Flying Saucers,’" Will suggested. “Do you know if Earth wins??

 

Mulder shook his head he didn’t know, but added as he started the car, "My God, I hope so."

 

*~*~*~*

 

End: A Moment in the Sun: Part VI

 


	4. Chapter 4

Begin: A Moment in the Sun, part VII

 

*~*~*~*

 

On the Sunday Society page of the New York Times, December 20, 1953, the headline read, "Manhattan's Most Eligible Bachelor Off the Market," and for once Frohike and the reporters got it right. If Mulder could pick one afternoon to relive for eternity, he’d choose that Saturday. It was a high-water mark and as close to perfect as the universe ever got for him.

 

At Will's urging, Mulder had worn only a heavy black sweater, trousers, and a scarf. He’d recklessly forgone a hat and jacket, and been certain he'd catch pneumonia in the name of fashion. Dana wore a skirt that swirled out as she skated, and a little jacket with fur trim on the collar and cuffs. He remembered the winter sky was a perfect shade of blue, the icicles glittered on the tree branches like sugar crystals, and she looked beautiful. 

 

"He should be here," Mulder told Dana. Mulder scanned the crowds enjoying the crisp air and snow of Central Park. Christmas approached, and families around them pulled sleds and strapped on skates. "Will was awake when I left to pick you up, and I told him noon. Maybe he went back to sleep."

 

"Noon is awfully early," Dana said, nodding in agreement.

 

Mulder narrowed his eyes at her. "For such a pretty woman, you're very critical."

 

She held tightly to the railing. Mulder glided effortlessly while he supported Emily in front of him.

 

"Do you think there's any chance of you ever taking everything I say as canon?" he asked.

 

"No," she responded. Dana let go of the railing, wobbled, and grabbed it again. Emily and Dana were fair at skating forward, but hadn't mastered turning or stopping.

 

"Good," he said, and grinned. "It will keep me in line."

 

A minute later, with Mulder holding Emily steady, he and Em wove past Dana, both nonchalantly standing on one skate. Mulder reached an uninhabited patch of ice. He moved faster and told Em, “Airplane.” Her mittens tightened against his palms. Leaning back, Mulder swung her in circles until her feet left the ice. She took flight, squealing happily until he slowed and set her gently back down on her miniature skates.  

 

Along the edge of Wollman Rink, a line of photographers waited with their cameras poised. They smirked at the antics on the ice, but their shutters remained closed.

 

"You're showing off," Dana called. She grabbed the hand Mulder offered as he passed. 

 

"My sister and I grew up on skates." Mulder held Dana with one hand and Emily with the other. "I used to ski too. Though, we're, we're- William and I and some friends," he started awkwardly. "We're going to Aspen for Christmas next week. A friend of mine - my attorney - but he's an old Army buddy - he has a house there. He has a family, so there will be lots of people. They're nice people. Good food. Pretty scenery. Holiday cheer. I was wondering if you and Emily would want to come?"

 

She’d started shaking her head.

 

“As my guests,” Mulder hurried to add. “That's all. It's what Will and I do. My father died last year and my mother isn't up to playing hostess anyway, so this is what we do for Christmas."

 

"I thought you had a sister."

 

"I do. I did, but, uh, she, uh...” Mulder floundered a few seconds. “Will's coming and Byers has two girls a little older than Emily. There will be whining over what to listen to on the radio and lots of tattling and puddles and runny noses. Last year, Will got bubble gum in Katy Byers' hair, so she gave him the stomach flu for Christmas. It's a family holiday trip, not a romantic weekend getaway."

 

"I'm not sure I can get off work with such short notice. Although I bet you'll help with that if I can't," she added.

 

"I bet I will." Mulder grinned at her again, seeing her resolve starting to crumble. "We charter a plane, so there's no airplane ticket to pay for. John Byers owns a big house, so there's a room for you and Emily. Will and I can bunk together, and we'll put you and Emily at the other end of the house," he explained. "It will all be very chaste. We'll fly out Thursday morning and you'll be back for work on Tuesday."

 

"You don't accept 'no,' do you?"

 

"I guess I'm used to getting what I want."

 

"I guess that's what scares me," she answered.

 

Mulder had let the subject drop.    

 

After several more trips around Wollman Rink, he spotted Will and Frohike ambling down a snow-covered slope.

 

"There's William,” Mulder told Dana. “The tall one," he added. "Not the one who looks like a troll. He's my agent, and he's very good, and he can't help how he looks."

 

Will chose a stunning teal blue and bright yellow plaid flannel shirt, with matching teal socks, to go with his ubiquitous leather jacket and cuffed blue jeans. Mulder didn’t even know where to buy teal and yellow plaid flannel. That was the 'you could use a haircut, son' phase, a precursor to the 'Dear God, when will you get a haircut, son?' era to follow.

 

Leaving Dana and Emily, Mulder crossed the rink and slid to a sideways stop in front of Frohike and Will, showering them with shaved ice. "Will, you're late. And where did you find Frohike?"

 

Frohike responded for him. "He was outside The Plaza as I passed, so I gave him a ride. I'm tagging along."

 

That had been bullshit. Mulder suspected Frohike wanted a look at Dana, and Will wanted reinforcement. Frohike even had a camera hanging from his neck. They probably had a secret signal worked out in case Will or Frohike wanted to leave.

 

"Is that Dana Scully?" Will asked, as Dana skated with Emily around the far corner of the rink, staying close to the handrail.

 

"That's Dana," Mulder responded.

 

Emily was fascinated Mulder had a fourteen-year-old son – “almost grown up,” according to her. Emily stared at his son, mesmerized. Predictably, she lost her balance and spun out on her backside, nearly pulling Dana down with her.

 

"Very nice," Frohike said quietly.

 

Dana helped her daughter up and brushed her off. She glanced at Mulder. He motioned for her to come over, and left Will to meet her halfway.

 

"Dana Scully - Melvin Frohike. And this is my son William," Mulder introduced as he brought Dana and Emily back to the edge of the rink. He held his breath and slid his skates back and forth restlessly.

 

"So you're the reason for the smile on my father's face these days," Will responded, and shook her hand. Mulder gave him a stern look. "I'm Will," his son amended more politely, "I'm pleased to meet you, Mrs. Scully."

 

"I'm pleased to meet you, Will. This is Emily."

 

"You talk funny," Em informed William before Dana shushed her. "My name is Emily. I am four."

 

"Hello, Emily-I-am-four," Will responded, thawing a degree. "I am William, and I'll be fifteen next month."

 

Emily blinked in stupefied awe.

 

After an uncomfortable pause, Mulder suggested, "Will, go rent skates. We have some time before we head to the movies."

 

Will tilted his head toward the sun, looking like he posed for a portrait on a coin. "No. I think I'll stand here and give the ladies something to look at." He sighed dramatically. "Being devilishly handsome is my cross to bear."

 

"Mine as well," Frohike said sadly, adopting the same posture. "That, and chronic halitosis."

 

Will glanced down at Frohike. "What's halitosis? Ear hair? Nose hair?"

 

"Bad breath," his agent clarified.

 

"Oh. Yes, you have that, too," Mulder’s son informed him.

 

Frohike touched his right ear dubiously. "Really?"

 

To Mulder's surprise, Dana laughed so hard she lost her balance again. Will seemed taken aback, but grinned uncertainly as she turned away. Emily continued staring at Will from the edge of the rink.

 

"Well, don't smile, boys," Mulder said, sliding away, "There could be casualties."

 

Frohike exhaled into his hand and sniffed.

 

"Yes, he's definitely your son," Dana told Mulder as they reached the middle of the ice. "You at fifteen with a British accent; fathers, guard your daughters."

 

"William will speak to girls. To many, many girls. I was a shy, awkward bookworm at fifteen."

 

"When did you blossom?"

 

"I'm still waiting. Do you like Will?"

 

"I like you, so what are the odds?" She gave his hand a squeeze. "Of course I like him. I adore him. What about the other way around?"

 

Behind her, Frohike made a circle with his arms in front of his belly, and turned sideways. Will made a similar circle but held it over his head. He pointed his feet outward and bent his knees like a dancer in a graceful plié. "Nine from Frohike; eight from Will. No, wait-" Will turned sideways and put both arms out in front of him. He raised his left foot, holding it out behind him. "Eight point five from William. He likes you; he's knocking off points for height. Will went with me to the Olympics in Helsinki last year, so he thinks this is funny. I don't have any excuse for Melvin Frohike," Mulder explained.

 

"You went to the Olympics in Finland? Or you were in the Olympics?" she asked skeptically, glancing back to make sure Emily was okay.  

 

Frohike shoved his hands in his coat pockets and stared up at the sky, whistling disinterestedly. Will discovered something hidden in the snow and poked it with the toe of his sneaker.

 

Standing in front of them in her little skating costume, hands on her hips, Emily looked like a perplexed tooth fairy.

 

"No, baseball isn't an Olympic sport. Even if it was, I couldn't participate. I was a professional and you have to be an amateur. It was an exhibition game they invited me to play in. I don't have a medal or anything. Well, I have a shirt." Mulder cleared his throat. "And a pin. Anyway, Will and I hung around and watched the games for a week or so before he had to go back to London and I had to go back for the All-Star game. I like to spend time with him, and that was before I had my summers free. Also why we go skiing - it was the off-season for me. Once school was out, he went to London with his mother. This summer, though, I am unemployed and he is mine and the world is our oyster."

 

Looking up at the pale blue sky, Dana laughed again. She held both of Mulder’s hands as he moved backward and she glided forward.

 

"What?"

 

"You're surreal," she said wondrously, shaking her head. "First of all, you're a baseball legend. I have doctors asking me to get your autograph for them. I have reporters calling my building and interviewing my neighbors. Photographers follow us. I remember my father listening to the radio as you played in the World Series before the war. You were in the Olympic Games and took a week after to tour Helsinki. You live in a corner apartment of a hotel I can't afford to walk into. You go to Yankee Field to play catch with your son. You fly to Aspen for Christmas; you take me to The Oak Room for dinner. I don't know who you had to kill to get that box at the opera. I try on a few dresses at Bergdorf Goodman and they mysteriously show up on my doorstep. If Emily wanted waffles, I think we'd get on a plane for Belgium. You're not real!"

 

"I'm real," Mulder insisted.

    

"No, you're not."

 

"I am. I get holes in my socks and indigestion, and the orange juice in my refrigerator goes bad," he told her honestly. "I like awful science-fiction movies and old blues records, and I like books better than I like most people. I worry about my son, and I can't sleep at night, and I get lonely, even in the middle of a crowd. I'm real," Mulder repeated. He leaned down to kiss her cheek and felt the heat transfer from her skin to his mouth. He put one hand on her neck, sinking his fingers into the little fur collar so she couldn't pull away. "I have a hole in my left sock I could show you. I'm real and this is real," he whispered. "Real and right and... And I love you." He kissed her lips, pulling her close as they moved smoothly across the ice. She leaned into him, tilting her head back.

 

From the edge of the rink, a dozen flashbulbs exploded. Mulder looked to see the reporters grinning smugly. Will and Emily remained on the other side of the rink and far out of the picture; Mulder and Dana were fair game. The newspapers had a photograph to go with their headline.

 

On the sidelines, Will put his arms straight up in the air, signaling a touchdown. Frohike turned sideways and pushed his gut out. The judges rated the kiss a perfect ten.

 

"Oh, that one's gonna make the papers," Mulder said sheepishly. For a few seconds, he'd forgotten the rest of the world existed.

 

"Yes," Dana answered breathlessly, and moistened her lips.

 

"I mean it," he added. "I do love you."

 

"I know; I guess that's the other thing that scares me." She glanced at Emily. "Mulder-" she said softly, still holding his hand as they approached the edge of the rink.

 

"What?"

 

Dana stayed focused on Emily, who stared at Will as if he was a god. 

 

Mulder felt it from Dana again – a wave of uncertainty Mulder assumed was about him and his life and her getting hurt. It hadn't been, though. It was Dana torn between letting herself love him and worrying about the hell her life might bring down on Mulder and Will.

 

"Nothing," she answered after a few seconds.

 

"Did she say 'yes?'" Will asked as Mulder and Dana slid off the ice. "To Aspen. Christmas?  Did you ask her?"

 

"Well, I asked her. She's considering it," Mulder fibbed. He put his arm around Dana's waist. She felt warm against him. Alive.

 

Will twisted one side of his mouth up into a grin, revealing braces that would come off two days later, and contemplating something bound to cause someone an ulcer. "Let's ply her with popcorn and a bad science fiction movie."

 

"There's no such thing as a bad science fiction movie," Mulder remembered responding.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder smiled as he traced the old piece of newspaper. “Manhattan's Most Eligible Bachelor Off the Market.” Beside it, inside Mulder’s locker in Yankee Stadium, also hung the photo Frohike took of them ten minutes later that afternoon, playing in the snow. 'A majestic December day in Central Park,' the caption read. 'Miss Scully carries a blue book with a paperclip marking her favorite chapter.' Nowhere in the picture was a paperclip or a blue book.

 

Mulder still had a photograph of Will at seven years old, grinning, with both his front teeth missing. The photo traveled with Mulder, and he’d hung the picture in so many lockers a little mound of clear tape had built up along the top edge. In the home locker room, Mulder had added a snapshot of Will with his arm around Maddie, before a dance at school a few weeks ago. Mulder also had one of Will's old notes, the writing uneven and the edges of the paper tattered. 'Daddy I need mony for a nuther hot bog please. Good luck. Hit a homer. Love William Mulder'

 

Mulder had taped up Frohike's photo of the four of them after Mulder was shot. Dana wore a tailored suit and practiced posing on the stairs in the house in Georgetown. Mulder leaned on the banister, his arm in a sling, and Will and Emily leaned on each other in the background. Mulder had the newspaper clipping from the press conference, too. In the photo, he and Dana sat on the front porch steps with the December afternoon sun glowing down on them. Dana looked lovely, but he'd needed a haircut.  The headline, Mulder supplied when a reporter asked him about his plans with Dana. “You don't save a good pitcher for tomorrow; tomorrow it may rain.”

 

Ships are safe in the harbor. But that's not what ships are built for.

 

"Mulder," one of the assistant coaches barked. The locker room door banged closed as the rest of the team headed out to the field for their first home game of the 1956 season. "Are you all right?"  

 

Mulder nodded. He stopped staring at the pictures and reached for his pinstriped jersey. Across the front, in big block letters, was 'New York' and on the back, a large 5. The sleeve said 'Yankees.' It felt comforting to have his identity on his shirt. It made things easier. Simpler.

 

The game remained the same, but some of the faces had changed. Lefty Gomez and Bill Dickey had been replaced by Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle.  Don Larson, the pitcher, could still thread a needle with a baseball. Casey Stengel was still the manager and showed every sign of continuing to be for rest of the century. Lou Gehrig, whose place in the line-up Mulder took the first game in Detroit, had been dead for fifteen years; Babe Ruth for eight. This made Mulder's thirteenth season and the Yankees fifty-fourth.

 

Dana Scully had been gone eleven months.

 

Mulder wondered if she was out there - a face in the stands or listening to the game on a radio. He wondered if Emily still lived to listen with her. If Dana was still out there, and their baby had been born, he was a few months old.

 

"Would you join us please?" the coach asked Mulder sarcastically. "Because we're going to have a riot, otherwise."

 

"I'm coming." Mulder slid the jersey over his head and leaned down to lace up his cleats. He grabbed his baseball cap off the hook and picked up his glove. He closed his locker and that part of his mind, and followed the coach out.

 

As soon as Mulder stepped out of the shadows, the crowd cheered as if hailing the resurrected hero. Mulder bit his lip. He hesitated, but the coach put a hand on his back, propelling him forward and out onto the familiar field. Though Mulder’s contract said he would play, the Yankees wanted him for star power the same way two decades ago, the Boston Braves had wanted a fading Babe Ruth. Mulder was window dressing; he got paid to stand the spotlight and wave to the fans and fill the stands.

 

Babe Ruth made $80,000 a year from 1930 to 1934 during his last seasons with the Yankees, a salary unsurpassed until 1953, when Frohike negotiated Mulder a $120,000 paycheck. In 1940, at the top of his game, Lou Gehrig made $39,000, and Ted Williams got $90,000 in 1950. The average major league player made $16,000 for the 1956 season – still no small chunk of change.

 

Two months after Dana and Emily went into hiding, Mulder made headlines by signing for $140,000 plus hefty bonuses. Frohike had negotiated endorsements for breakfast cereal, Morley cigarettes, and again for Cadillac. At forty-one years old, Mulder was one of the oldest players in the league, but also by far the highest paid player in the history of the game. Given Mulder could read the players' minds and move the ball, if need be, the game should be like shooting ducks in a barrel.

 

Don't screw it up, he still told himself.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Frohike glanced at Mulder. Both men waved, but Frohike continued shepherding a new kid through the gauntlet of reporters. Years ago, Frohike did the same for Mulder: grooming him like a trainer with a prize racehorse. New Kid had the same stunned look Mulder once had, as though he expected an announcement - there was a mistake and no one wanted him to play for the New York Yankees after all.      

 

Mulder ducked his head and pressed through the crowd, trying to go unnoticed. He’d hit a homerun in the eighth inning, batting in two other runs, but New Kid hit two homers his first game out. Mulder had done the interviews and pose-with-the-bat photos on the field after the game. Time, Life, Look: all the single syllable publications had their stories; only freelancers remained, waiting for crumbs.

 

"How's it feel to play again?" someone shouted as Mulder stepped out of the locker room in his suit. Mulder carried his duffel bag and car keys, and headed for the players' parking lot.

 

A flashbulb exploded in his peripheral vision. Mulder shied away. He pulled the brim of his hat lower on his forehead. 

 

"It feels incredible," Mulder responded predictably, and walked faster.

 

He had four hundred and twelve steps to the parking lot and one hundred miles exactly up the Hudson River Valley to the foot of the Catskill Mountains. Mulder wanted to toss his duffel bag in the trunk, slide behind the wheel, tune the radio to the station Will hated, and let the evening wind blow over his face as he drove. He liked the long drive. As the city slid away, so did the rest of the real world until it became a faded memory on an old postcard. 

 

Before Mulder could escape, the reporters spotted him. The men stampeded across the hall like wolves trying to get at the kill. They encircled him, jockeying for camera angles.

 

"How's the shoulder?"

 

A flashbulb popped so close Mulder felt the heat on his jaw.  

 

"Can you comment on missing a week of spring training?" another man asked, holding his pad and pencil ready. "Is it true you were injured?"

 

"Good. Fine. No, I have no comment. No, I'm not injured," Mulder answered. He tried to blink the spots out from in front of his eyes.

 

"You looked good out there, Mulder. Real good. Any thoughts on next season?"

 

"Let's cross that bridge when we-" He raised his hand as flashbulbs popped like fireworks. "When we, uh, get to it."

 

"Hand down. Give us a grin! Come on, Mulder," the crowd shouted.

 

"Are you an Elvis fan?" someone else asked.

 

"What do you think of Japan being admitted into the UN? Of Eisenhower running for re-election?"

 

A weaselly little man said, "There are rumors of a wedding and a baby shower at your house. Can you confirm them?"

 

"If I hit it over the wall, I can run as slowly as I like." Mulder told them, ignoring the questions he'd been asked. "My plan is to hit it over the wall every game this season. So far, so good."

 

"That's a good line," a reporter informed Mulder as all the pencils scribbled.

 

It was, and it was Frohike's line with a little lace tacked on. It would be the headline tomorrow, overshadowing the cocky new kid's fluke homers. Mulder smirked and started pushing through the crowd again. "Goodnight, boys," he said with monotone finality.

 

"'Night, Mulder," they answered in unison. The swarm of reporters, microphones, and camera parted, clearing a path. Second later, Mulder heard the reporters calling out questions for Frohike and New Kid.

 

Mulder saw the almost-empty parking lot at the end of the corridor, with the New York skyline outlined by the evening light. The moon rose, bringing Venus as a counterpoint. With the crowds gone, discarded soda cups and crumpled napkins sprinkled the dark pavement like powdered sugar: remnants of a warm spring afternoon.  

 

When Mulder started playing again, he'd watched for Josh Exley. Mulder wanted to talk with him, but since that night last year with Frohike, he saw no sign of Exley. So Mulder asked at the office - had Mr. Exley retired? “Who?” had been the response. Mulder told them, “Joshua X. Lee, the Colored groundskeeper. I've seen him here a dozen times. He used to play in the Negro leagues.”

 

“Who?” the head groundskeeper repeated.

 

Thinking back, Mulder realized he'd never seen Exley at a game or a practice. Only at night or when the stadium was closed. So he'd called Frohike, who confirmed they had seen Josh Exley that night. Mulder checked with William; yes, his son recalled an old Colored man who worked the pitching machine for them, sometimes. Next, Mulder called the NY chief of police and asked a favor. Joshua Exley had been a white child in Macon, Georgia who disappeared in 1942. And Exley had been a Negro League baseball legend who died in 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico around the time Frohike insisted a UFO crash-landed there.

 

Some mysteries, Mulder decided, he wasn't meant to figure out.

 

A few committed fans waited near the players' lot. He stopped to sign autographs for a group of boys up past their bedtime. A collection of young women waited, too, all colorful variations on a theme: tight sweaters, high heels, coy smiles and promising eyes. The baseball Annies were available - a fringe benefit of the job. Mulder had never, in all the years he played, left the stadium with one of those women. He wouldn’t start tonight.

 

He signed the final autograph, and told the boy and his beaming father goodnight. Mulder adjusted his duffel bag, exhaled, and started toward his car alone, leaving the crowd behind. 

 

"Mulder?" a familiar female voice asked from behind him.

 

Mulder whirled around. 

 

He saw her all at once, a visceral recognition rather than slowly taking note of the familiar carriage and coloring. The universe shifted like an old transmission, throwing his heart forward and slamming it back into its usual place. "Scu-" he started before he realized she wasn't. He adjusted his grip on the duffel bag. "Yes, ma'am?" he asked, using his 'I'm a busy man' tone.

 

"Are you Fox Mulder?"

 

He nodded. His eyes flitted over her hungrily. 

 

She wasn't Dana, but she was close. For a second, something traitorous in his brain reconsidered and wondered if she could be close enough for a few hours. He didn't want one of the girls waiting outside the players' entrance, eager to hump the American dream - but she didn’t look like one of those girls. William had left as soon as the game ended; Will had to drive Maddie home and be in school early tomorrow morning. No one would know what Mulder did with the night, or care. He didn't want just sex, though; he wanted someone to talk with and laugh with. To tell ghost stories, and buy groceries, and steal cookies with. To have a cup of coffee with and sit in some late-night diner and talk about something besides baseball. Mulder wanted someone to be happy to see him besides Frohike and the reporters.

 

"My name is Melissa,” the woman said. “You knew my sister Dana."

 

"Your sister?" he answered cautiously. Melissa, Melissa... Big sister Missy, he remembered. Dana said Missy lived with her husband in San Francisco; she was an artist and the other black sheep of the Scully family. He'd never met her, but he knew Dana wrote to her.

 

"I went to The Plaza. They said you don't live there anymore."

 

"No, we don't. I-I don’t," he corrected.

 

Melissa met Mulder’s gaze with the same regal bearing Dana had. She was taller, with the lithe gracefulness of a ballerina. The muscles tightened in his lower abdomen.

 

"I don't mean to bother you, Mr. Mulder. I want to speak with you about Dana."

 

He could not sleep with Dana's sister. Mulder swallowed, breaking eye contact. "I'm sorry; I c-can't help you."

 

He glanced at her from underneath his eyelashes, arranged his features into no expression, and stepped around her. He walked across the parking lot toward the black Chrysler he bought for Dana.

 

"I think you can," she persisted, walking quickly to keep up. "Mr. Mulder-"

 

"I'm sorry; I can't help you," he repeated sternly, being careful not to look at her again.  

 

"My sister wrote to me about you. You loved her. She loved you."

 

Mulder unlocked the trunk and tossed his duffel bag inside. "I've loved a lot of women, sweetheart. Some were more memorable than others. Look, if your sister’s in trouble, I’m sorry, but she needs to talk to my agent or my lawyer.”

 

“You’re lying,” she accused him. “You know exactly who my sister is. She was special to you.”

 

“They’re all special to me for about fifteen minutes,” Mulder said, and slammed the trunk so hard something broke loose and rattled. “You could be special, too, if you like.” He tried to unlock the driver's side door, taking three tries and scratching the paint as he fumbled to get the key in the lock.

 

"You called my sister 'Scully,'” Missy informed him angrily. “You were shot, and her last name was the first thing you said when you woke up. You hate to be called 'Fox.' You bought Emily a giant rocking horse at FAO Schwarz, even though Dana told you not to, and you paid to have it shipped to Georgetown. You, you, you can't cook. Anything. You speak five or six languages. You have a photographic memory but no sense of direction. You went to Oxford. Oxford University in England. You live on deli takeout, coffee, and scrambled eggs if Dana isn't around, and she's afraid you're malnourished. You have an old gray flannel shirt you like to wear. She patched it for you. You have a teenage son named William she taught to ride the subway. You wanted to get married but Dana wouldn't set a date. You wanted children but Dana couldn't have any more. Don't pretend you don't know who I'm talking about!"

 

"All right; I remember!” Mulder slammed the car door closed and, standing in the parking lot, put his hands on his hips. “Of course I remember! What do you want?"

 

"You called my mother last year, insinuating Dana was expecting again and you weren't happy about it. You said she took off because you wouldn't marry her. I think you were lying. I think you fooled my Catholic mother and my over-protective brother, but you don't fool me, Mr. Mulder. I know my sister."  

 

"I'm sorry; I can't help you," he repeated for the third time. He still held his car keys, and noticed his hand shaking.

 

"It doesn't add up. It doesn't even come close. You took care of Emily and scoured the planet for Dana the first time she vanished. You beat Bill senseless because he wouldn't let you talk to Dana; it took two policemen and three guards to drag you away from her hospital room. This time, you know she's expecting and her daughter is sick, but you shrug and say 'oh well'?"

 

He gripped the door handle. His knuckles strained white under his skin. "I'm sorry; I can't-"     

 

She tilted her chin up and crossed her arms. "No, obviously you can't. Or you won't. My brother was right. I'm sorry I bothered you, Mr. Mulder. Truly sorry."

 

As Melissa turned away, Mulder grabbed her wrist. "Wait."

 

She stared at his hand as if deciding if she would pull away or not.

 

Mulder moved his mouth silently a few times, and asked, "Do you know where she is? Is she okay? Is Emily okay? Do you know about-" 'the baby,' he started to say, but stopped himself in time. "Are they okay?"

 

"I don't know. I came all this way because I was hoping you did."

 

Mulder shook his head. He stared at a paper soda cup as the wind slowly rolled toward him. "I haven't heard from her since Memorial Day last year."

 

"You don't know where she might have gone?"

 

"No." He nudged the cup with the toe of his shoe to get it moving again. "I don't even know if she's alive."

 

Melissa studied him. She said softly, "Dana wrote you wore guilt the way other men wore neckties. She was right. But Dana wrote you were her safe port in a storm, and she was wrong. You're the eye of the storm; it tumbles around you. You think if you're strong enough and brave enough and smart enough, you can fight back the wind and protect the people you love."

 

Mulder nodded slowly, not sure how else to respond. He did decide he should let go of her wrist.

 

"Whatever you're hiding, I'm sure there's a good reason for it. I just want to know my sister's safe."

 

"Dana has a telephone number she can call if she needs anything. It's a friend of a friend of a friend. She's never called it. It's been safe for months and months. We, uh, sent a message telling her. She hasn't c-ca-come back. I don't know why." Mulder glanced up. Violet-blue light glowed against her hair. He took off his hat and fiddled with it. "May I buy you a cup of coffee? There's a place across the street. We can talk. About Dana."

 

"You sound like you need someone to talk to."

 

That was early April, 1956.

 

*~*~*~*

 

A year ago, in Georgetown, Mulder and Dana could make love before anyone else woke, shushing each other and giggling like teenagers. Once Emily got up, the three of them could have breakfast in bed. They’d get crumbs on the sheets and eat the toast crusts Em didn't want. Mulder walked a delicate line between sloth and malodorous, but he usually managed to put off showering and shaving until ten.

 

Eventually, they'd concede to morning and wander downstairs. Emily watched cartoons while wearing her Davy Crockett cap and wrapped in the pink blanket from her bed. Dana sat at the dining room table to read the newspaper. Mulder stood behind her, sipping coffee and reading over her shoulder.

 

By noon, Will woke. Something in the old house was bound to be leaking, falling off, stopped up, or shorting out. Flush with full-tummy, post-love-making optimism, Mulder would get his toolbox and announce he'd fix it. Dana would suggest Mulder call a repairman on Monday. Mulder's toolbox held a hammer, three screwdrivers, a wrench, a roll of duct tape, a washer, four rusted nails, a thumbtack, and an old pack of gum. If Mulder insisted, she'd sigh and get out the bandages, iodine, and peroxide. Mulder's home repair projects became excuses for Dana to fuss over his injuries while Will fixed whatever needed fixing.

 

Evenings fell into two categories. Sometimes, they included a heady rush of crisp tuxedo shirts and high heels clicking and frantic searching opera tickets or cufflinks. Those nights glittered like diamonds, but were surprisingly rare. More frequently, their evenings involved old sweaters and good books, sipping tea and listening to the radio and remembering to stir the stockpot on the stove each time one of them passed through the kitchen. Mr. Baseball and Miss All-American-Brains-and-Beauty, despite being the center of a global conspiracy, weren't the most exciting couple on the planet.

 

At night they could lie in bed, bare limbs tangled in a jumble of satiated flesh. They could watch the stars tumbling in slow motion through the blackness of space. He’d comb his fingers through her hair and caress the elegant muscles of her shoulders. Mulder could tell Dana he loved her as he held her safe in his arms. Loved her more than strawberry milkshakes, even.

 

Mulder had fantasy down to an art form. Otherwise he would have gone crazy. Dana surrounded him: worn cookbooks and silky half-slips and small gardening gloves. Her reading glasses, her coffee mug, a winter scarf still smelling of her skin. An ivory satin evening gown hanging in his closet, never worn. Dana’s life blended seamlessly into Mulder’s, except she wasn't in the kitchen or at the grocery store or at school.

 

He dreamed of Dana. Vivid, disjointed, fanciful dreams. He felt the warmth of her skin and tasted her lips. In his dreams, every molecule seemed real, but the dreams faded with the morning sun into barely-remembered fragments. Those fragments kept Mulder sane, though.

 

Winter brought the worst of it - the darkness, the waiting and not knowing. Dana knew Mulder made the deal with the smoking man, but perhaps she still thought she couldn’t return: because of Emily, because of the baby, because of something. Dana was alive, though. Perhaps unwilling to endanger Mulder and Will by returning, but alive. The other possibility made Mulder’s core tremble: Dana couldn’t come home. They'd found her. Those doctors had Emily locked in a hospital room like Gibson, and Dana was one of those unconscious pregnant women strapped to a table in some cold lab. Of course, Mulder considered a third possibility. Dana was out there, but never coming back to him. She had seen what Mulder was, what he could do. And even if their baby made it, even as Emily got sicker, even if Dana needed Mulder, she wasn't coming back.

 

One night in late January, Mulder tossed and turned. He read for a while, trying to fill the hours. Instead of looking at the page, though, he found himself staring at the telephone, willing it to ring. Hours passed silently. Long after midnight, he snatched the telephone. Mulder had the operator connect him to New York City, and he ordered Melvin Frohike, "Call your friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend. Or call Agent Dales or Mr. Skinner or somebody. I want to find her. Find them. Or find out what's happened to them. It's been months, and I can't- Make the call."

 

Frohike must have been asleep when the telephone rang, but answered without missing a beat. "I'm not gonna do that, Mulder. You don't want me to. Not if it puts them at risk." After a few seconds, Frohike asked obliquely, "If she beat the odds, is it about time for your 'them' to go from two to three?"

 

"Yeah," Mulder managed with his throat tight.

 

"Mulder, those were some long odds to start with."

 

"I know." He swallowed dryly. "I... I wanna know."

 

Mulder knew Frohike didn't want to say it, and Mulder didn't want to hear him say it.

 

"I can't do this. I can't do nothing," Mulder insisted hoarsely.

 

"I wish I had a better suggestion, Mulder. I do. Do you and Will want some company? I could drive up, be there in two hours. I'll bring bagels."

 

"No." Mulder took a long breath. "Thanks, though."

 

There was another pause.

 

"Don't underestimate her," Frohike reminded him. "She's one hell of a woman."

 

"Don't I know it," Mulder answered, and hung up the telephone.

 

After searching, Mulder found a glass bottle of sleeping pills in the hall closet: the ones prescribed for Dana when Emily had pneumonia. He swallowed two. He beat his pillow into submission and lay down again. With his head on his folded arm, he faced the side where Dana should be, and waited.

 

"One hell of a woman," Mulder told the empty place in his bed. He put his hand out as if she was there, as if he could reach across time and space and find her.

 

The two sleeping pills did nothing, so he added a third. Then, a fourth pill.

 

Mulder closed his eyes, still praying the telephone would ring. He’d pick it up and hear her voice. She would say she needed him. She would say she wanted to come home. He could get on a plane and go to her and bring her home and everything would be okay.

 

He ached.

 

He heard the winter wind whistling outside. A window rattled. Will snored softly in the bedroom down the hall, but the telephone stayed silent.

 

Sometime between four AM and dawn, he dreamed of her. Mulder dreamed she was pregnant, with long, beautiful auburn hair. He remembered the smell of tallow candles and a cold hearth - the feel of fur as he sat on the bed and a warm night breeze against his skin. The room smelled of lovemaking and summer in the mountains. He remembered feeling her unborn child moving under his palm, and sensing its presence. Dana’s hand felt warm and her blue eyes looked curious as she traced the scars on his chest. Her lips parted as he kissed her. Behind her, in the darkness of a canopied bed, he saw a wounded man sleeping peacefully. Mulder studied the man, and realized the man was him.

 

Mulder woke with a headache and a vague recollection of the odd dream, but also with a certainty. He was as tied to that woman as the buttons on her blouse. Somewhere his soul slept with hers, at peace, safe from the world. The certainty – and Will needing a father and the cat needing fed – kept Mulder going another day. Mulder strung those days and dreams and memories together, like the pearls and knots of a necklace, held back the darkness, and made it to spring.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Properly done, a Saturday in late May was like a nine-year old's summer; it could last an eternity.

 

Mulder smiled and rolled over as he woke. He knew Dana wasn't there, but he reached out anyway, patting the empty space on the bed beside him. The clock suggested before seven, but in the Hudson Valley - the land of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle – that was a suggestion and open for negotiation. Like Brigadoon, things moved slower.

 

It nearly felt safe.

 

William left a trail of socks and a t-shirt and boxer shorts from his bedroom to the bathroom. Downstairs, the boy had dumped out a basket of clean laundry on the sofa, looking for something. Will had worked out at the weight bench at dawn, leaving weights everywhere except back on the rack. An empty glass sat on the kitchen counter, and Will left the pitcher of orange juice out. 

 

Mulder put the juice away and set the glass in the sink. His son's saving grace was having made coffee. Mulder poured a cup. He slid his feet into his canvas deck shoes and shrugged on a flannel shirt to go with his T-shirt and running shorts. Standing on the back porch, he stretched and yawned as the screen door banged shut behind him.

 

The wet grass along the path to the river whipped damp lines over his ankles. Gray-green mountains surrounded the vast openness of the valley. The white fences that once enclosed horses ran for miles around the empty fields, with wildflowers sprouting at the fence posts. The house was an old, two-story white farmhouse with gables and weather vanes and a broad front and back porch. The windows got replaced over the winter, but the kitchen sink dripped and the cook stove faded, though Mulder and Will never cooked on more than one burner at once. Half a left-over pizza pie got forgotten and turned blue in the never-used oven. The fireplaces kept them warm that winter, the stairs squeaked, and the walls and doors were solid. No cameras or microphones or unseen observers. Their new home was two hours and several worlds from Manhattan, and the only prying eyes belonged to a raccoon that kept getting into the trashcan.

                

As Mulder walked down the long dock beside the boathouse, he saw Will far out in the river. His son’s broad shoulders pulled the oars effortlessly through the water. Mulder set his cup on top of a post and leaned on the weathered railing. He watched unnoticed as his son rowed. He still looked twice, wondering who carved a man's body and gave it his son's features.

 

Mulder put his own light-weight boat in the water. He fitted the oars into the locks and settled in. At Oxford, he'd liked the early morning practices. When one man rowed, he had to work the oars evenly. Both arms had to work flawlessly and in perfect unison. Mulder’s arms did, now.

 

As his shoulders and chest warmed up, he braced his feet and rowed harder, feathering the oars. The seat slid smoothly back and forth, and the shell glided across the water. He startled a family of geese. They flew along the surface beside him for a while, honking excitedly. His body hummed, his muscles worked, and his mind cleared. 

 

He reached the turnaround point upstream. He found Will waiting with his face flushed in the cool morning air. Mulder turned the shell, looked pointedly at his son, and asked, "Feeling lucky, baby boy?"

 

"I am, Daddy-O," William responded. The boy let go of his oars long enough to skin off his T-shirt, but Mulder left his shirt on. William dipped his hands into the Hudson River and splashed water on his face before he challenged, "Think you can keep up?"

 

"With you? Who let you out here without a nanny and life preserver?" 

 

"The loser makes breakfast and washes up dishes."

 

"Agreed," Mulder said.

 

Will grinned mischievously, and the race was on. 

 

Downstream, the sun rose orange and violet. Fog rolled off the river and drifted away. Mulder rowed hard, and the riverbank glided past in a blur. His lungs and heart pumped, and sweat soaked his T-shirt and trickled down his belly and his back. All he heard was his own breath and heartbeat, and the oars against the river. His left hand grew numb. From the corner of his eye, he saw Will working hard to keep up.

 

Row, Mulder told the hand silently once he couldn't feel it any longer.

 

Fifteen minutes later, as they passed their boathouse, a temporary truce was called and a rematch scheduled for the next Saturday morning.

 

"Not too shabby," Will conceded, panting. "For an old chap."

 

He splashed Mulder with his oar, and Mulder splashed William back, soaking him.

 

"I didn't want to embarrass you," Mulder responded. His body felt warm and electrified – not a good as sex, but as close as he would get. "It's Saturday. Do you want to go to a movie?"

 

"I do," Will responded. He let go of his oars and brushed his wet hair back from his forehead. "Let's get a burger, too."

 

"I could teach you to drive."

 

"Could we go fishing instead? I still have my fishing pole."

 

"Sure, son," Mulder promised.

 

As they planned a day that would never happen again, Mulder saw a petite young woman making her way down the path from the house. Her stylish, full skirt and crinolines swayed as she moved. She walked to end of the dock and stood with her hands on her hips. She surveyed the scene with a frown. Mulder turned his shell and rowed toward her with long, unhurried strokes.

 

With a strong French accent, she informed Will, "Guillaume, we will to be too much very late." Will waved to her, still fifty feet from the bank. She ran her fingers through her short, dark curls, and gestured at him in frustration. "You have library working. Why it is you are not ready?"

 

Will grinned and let his oars splay. He stretched lazily and settled back in the narrow boat, getting comfortable.

 

"Guillaume, I mean it! Is no joke. I tell you to be ready seven-thirty."

 

"You can't have him, Maddie," Mulder informed her, floating near the dock. "It's Saturday. It's our day. We're going to the early sci-fi movie. Right, Will?"

 

Will gave his father a 'thumbs up,' but otherwise didn’t move.

 

"We're infiltrating the ladies' dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman-"

 

Two 'thumbs up' from Will.

 

"We're getting burgers and going fishing and reading ‘Return of The King’ until we fall asleep on the riverbank and get eaten alive by mosquitoes," Mulder continued. "It'll be a great day. One for the history books. Do you want to come?"

 

She pushed her dark eyebrows together. A perplexed crease appeared in the white skin between them. "I cannot come to the burgers and the movies, Monsieur Mulder. I am to be too much too late for work. He has library working or no graduation. Guillaume, come from the boat. What is this burgers and movies?"

 

"If you want me, you'll have to wait." Will didn’t bother turning his head. He aped a flat American accent. "Daddy-O and I are goin' fishin'."

 

"You can't have him, Maddie," Mulder told her again, grinning. "Not quite yet."

 

She folded her arms and shouted across the river, "Guillaume Adam Mulder, you come immediately! Come from the boat! We are to be too much-"

 

"We are to be too much too late for work." Will sat up and took the oars. "We are to be too much too late for library working. Do you think all the encyclopedias will be gone if I don't get there at eight, Maddie?" He rowed to the dock and observed, "You look pretty. Come here and turn around."

 

Madelon complied, turning slowly so he could see her dress. Will drifted closer. She stepped to the edge, swishing back and forth for his amusement. With her new, short haircut, Mulder thought she looked like Audrey Hepburn. Will insisted Audrey Hepburn tried to look like Maddie. She was lovely and bossy and bright and funny in a wry, French way - and nothing like any girl Mulder ever dreamed would catch his son's eye.

 

"I can see your knickers," Will informed her.

 

She sighed in exasperation and stepped back.

 

"Fine. You may come along," Will decided. "Go dig up some worms, honey. There's a spade and a pail in the barn. No library. No work. No baseball. I told you; we're going fishing today. The Yankees and graduation can go to Hell; it's Saturday."

 

"Such language! You two - you are too large for your trousers!"

 

Mulder bit his lip, looking at the surface of the river and struggling not to laugh.  

 

Will’s face, flushed, darkened further. "It's 'too big for your britches,' honey," he told her, and put one hand on the ladder.

 

"Are you going to the library in Kingston?" Mulder asked as Will pulled his boat up and onto the dock. "Or do you want to drop Maddie off at work and ride into Manhattan with me?"

 

"Kingston. This is my term paper, but she's more hyped up about it than I am. I'm going to pass, and I'm not going to university. Why does it matter if I pass with a B or a D? What do you want me to drive?"

 

Will's Thunderbird remained out of commission after getting a large Buick-shaped dent in the passenger side door. For two months, the only garage in town kept sending it back, saying it was repaired. Will kept returning it, saying it wasn't repaired to his standards.

 

"Take the Chrysler. I'll drive the Porsche today."

 

"Are you certain?"

 

His left arm ached after the games, and the automatic gearshift on the Chrysler was easier for him to drive home one-handed. "Take it," Mulder said optimistically. "Are you two coming to the game?"

 

Will turned to Maddie and asked, "Are we going to watch my father play this afternoon?"

 

"We are to see."

 

"We'll see. Maybe," Will relayed as if Mulder hadn't heard her. He added, "Hit a homer, Daddy-O."

 

"I'll see what I can do, baby boy," he promised.

 

"Bonjour, Monsieur Mulder. Bonne chance," Madelon told Mulder before turning back to the house. "Guillaume, I will clean dishes, cook breakfast. You will wash; you smell of the fish."

 

“Balls?” Mulder mouthed at his son. He gestured as though Will might have left them somewhere in the Hudson River.

 

Will made a face, but obediently followed Maddie toward the house. Mulder saw Will picking at her, and shake his wet hair at her, sprinkling her pretty outfit with river water. Maddie pushed him away and ordered him to stop. At halfway through his seventeenth year, Will was six feet and change of lean muscle; Maddie stood Dana’s height and build. Will had to slouch as they walked so he could hear whatever Maddie told him to do. He must have tired of being bossed around. Will kissed her, which, Mulder could vouch, was a sure-fire way to shut up a headstrong woman for a few seconds. As they embraced, Will wrapped one arm around her waist and swung her off her feet easily. Will set her down, and she swayed. She paled and stumbled.

 

Will grabbed her shoulders, steadying her and anxiously apologizing.

 

Mulder watched, still floating beside the dock, his hands on his oars in case he needed to get out.

 

After a few seconds, Maddie frowned and swatted Will. William looked chastised. She took his hand and led him toward the house, still lecturing him rapid-fire in her unique version of the English language.

 

Mulder laughed to himself. He turned the lightweight boat in the water and started up the river again, putting off starting the day a little longer.

 

*~*~*~*

 

The exotic Porsche made the local mechanic nervous but, with William helping, Mulder changed the oil last time. As Will coached – and handed tools and held the light - Mulder had unscrewed the bolt, drained out the old oil, changed the filter, et cetera, et cetera. This evening, Will laid out the parts and tools before he left to take Maddie home. He’d explained each step like his father was a complete moron.

 

Will's father was a complete moron. Mulder had hit a homerun over the wall this afternoon, but he still lacked a mechanical gene.

 

Mulder heard a car approaching on the long gravel driveway, going at a reasonable speed. William "Lead Foot" Mulder became a more cautious driver after wrecking with Maddie in the car. Will had been speeding, and an old man ran a stop sign on a dark, rainy night in March. The old man lost his license; Maddie lost her spleen and ended up with eight stitches in her head.

 

Beneath the car, Mulder adjusted the portable light so it didn’t blind him. He picked up the wrench and squirmed to get at the bolt. The old Coney Island cat Emily had adopted peeked under the Porsche, curious at all the foul language. "Stew meat," Mulder threatened. Kitten flicked his tail with an amused, evil gleam in his one good eye.  

 

The bolt turned. Mulder exhaled in satisfaction but cursed and jerked away as scalding motor oil poured down his forearm. Unfortunately, underneath a small sports car, he had no way to escape. Mulder’s foot hit something as he squirmed. He heard glugging sounds and realized he’d kicked over one of the cans of oil Will opened before he left.

 

"Shit." Mulder crawled out from beneath the car. "Goddamn it!"

 

Kitten headed for the safety of the hayloft. 

 

Mulder found a rag and wiped up as much oil as possible. He’d ruined his T-shirt, so he pulled it off and threw it at the cat in the hayloft. He missed. Still, Kitten watched contemptuously as Mulder crawled under the car again. Walter Skinner changed his own motor oil. Other men changed their own motor oil. It couldn’t be that damn hard.

 

A sharp pebble dug into Mulder’s shoulder. He felt sticky and itchy all over, and he had too much oil and grease on his hands to get a grip on anything. Mulder knew Will told him to do something else while the old oil drained out of the engine, but he couldn’t remember what. He jiggled things knowingly, hoping he would remember. A little piece came off in his hand.

 

"Will!" he called in frustration, and heard footsteps approaching. Mulder turned the grease-coated part over and tried to fit it back into place before Will arrived. It wouldn't stay. "What is this? It fell off the frame, I think. Is it important?" Mulder held the piece out from underneath the car so his son could see it. Will didn’t answer, so Mulder turned his head. He saw small women's loafers standing beside the Porsche instead of Will's big sneakers. "Oh. Bonsoir, Madelon. Tu es retournee. Ou est Guillaume?" Mulder showed her the piece and lied, "C'est casse. Dites-lui: je n'ai pas touche."

 

"You did break it, but I don't think it's vital," Dana Scully's voice said.

 

Mulder slammed his head into the Porsche’s undercarriage as he tried to sit up. He scrambled gracelessly from underneath the car, sticky with sweat and slippery with oil. Dirt and old straw stuck to his back, and grease stained his ancient blue jeans.

 

It was Dana. Not her sister, not a hallucination, not a dream. He saw Dana Scully standing in his barn. She wore a skirt and a white blouse - slimmer, with her hair longer and caught in a ponytail at the base of her neck. In spite of the dizzying rush of blood to his brain, Mulder felt an inner calm like knowing a nightlight remained on even without opening his eyes.

 

"Hello," she said softly. She was oddly still as the world continued to turn.

 

"Hello," Mulder answered numbly. "My God."

 

"Have you had a head injury? What made you think you could fix a car?"

 

"It wasn't broken. Not until I touched it. I was supposed ta-to-to- I was- Will said- Oh my God!" 

 

He cupped his palms against her cheeks, then wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off her feet. He held her for a moment. He set her back down, staring at her, trying to take in everything in case she vanished. "I-I-I'm getting you dirty." He tried to wipe a smear of grease off her cheek but only made it larger.

 

"It's fine." Dana’s eyes shone as she looked up at him. "Are you all right?"

 

It was such a mundane, inane question he laughed nervously. "I, uh, I burned my arm. With the oil. A minute ago." Mulder held it out for her to examine. He put his other hand on his wrist so it would stop shaking.

 

"It's not bad. You'll live. Anything else?"

 

"Everything," he answered breathlessly. "Everything hurts."

 

Dana stepped back. She looked at him in the glow from the old light hanging from the rafters.

 

He felt self-conscious of the bullet scars and the incision. The scars faded to less red and angry, but still horrible - at least in his mind.

 

"Is this what 'playing form' looks like?" Dana slid her fingertips over his shoulders and down his arms. She traced the evidence of hours of baseball practice and rowing and swimming and lifting weights. "This is nice."

 

"Oh. Yeah," Mulder mumbled awkwardly. "I can't believe you're here, honey. I'm afraid to believe it.” The world’s best stenographer couldn’t have kept up with him as he told Dana, “Because if you're not here and I believe you are, I think I'll go crazy. Well, technically, I’d be crazy because I'd be hallucinating, so I'd be going crazier. If you are here and I don't believe it, I'd be delusional, which would be equally bad, and, and, and- I sound like a blithering idiot, don't I?” He paused for a breath. “I-I wish I had a more reliable witness than Kitten."

 

Dana rested her forehead against his bare chest. She leaned into him as though she could crawl inside. "I've missed you so much."

 

"You can't imagine-" His throat tightened and he couldn't finish his sentence. "You're okay?"

 

"I'm here." She straightened up. Her expression wavered between tears and a smile. "We heard you on the radio. We listened to the game in the car this afternoon."

 

"We?” Mulder echoed. “Are you a 'we'?"

 

Will left the front porch light on. The dusty, nondescript Chevrolet in the driveway had a Washington State license plate. Mulder stared at it as they walked past. He saw two empty paper soda cups and crumpled food wrappers in the back seat, along with some crayons, a coloring book, and a baby blanket. In the passenger seat, he saw an envelope with 'Dana K. Scully' written on it in his handwriting. It was open, and two sheets of stationery rested beside it. One note was in Will's hand: directions from Manhattan and a sketch showing the complicated turns between Kingston and the old horse ranch they'd bought. The other note Mulder wrote: 'We can't live here anymore. I love you. Come home.' He’d sealed both sheets in an envelope and left it at the front desk at The Plaza so many months ago he'd forgotten doing it.

 

Dana nodded. She took Mulder’s grimy hand and led him up the steps. "We're a 'we.'"

 

*~*~*~*

 

When Mulder dreamed of falling, he plummeted from the heavens and watched helplessly as the ground came closer. In those dreams, his body tensed, bracing for the impact. He prayed he woke up before it was too late. Then, out of the blue, God or chance or destiny intervened. Something slowed his fall and guided him softly, gently back to Earth. Those dreams left him breathless, and thankful, and still waiting for the sky to come crashing down on top of him.

 

Mulder checked the clock on the mantle, making sure time moved at the right pace. It did, so he looked around his living room, checking for red. He didn't see any, which meant this wasn't a dream. They were real, the three of them. Dana and, pale and asleep on the couch, Emily, and-

 

Beside the sofa stood what looked like an oblong laundry basket with four spindly legs. Inside the basket he saw a little blue blanket, and under the blanket-

 

Employing his coveted genetics, the thousands of dollars his father spent on Mulder’s education, and knowledge gleaned from years as a closet intellectual, Mulder pointed at the basket and announced, "That's a baby."

 

At his voice, the infant opened its blue eyes and splayed tiny fingers in front of its mouth. It yawned, and a little face metamorphosed into toothless gums and taut pink lips before resuming its normal shape.

 

"That's, that's, that's a baby," Mulder repeated. His brain sputtered like an engine low on gas. “A baby.”

 

As Mulder stood frozen in the doorway, Dana's hand slid out of his. She walked to the basket and leaned over it. The baby reached up, as if fascinated by her face. "Yes, it is," she whispered, smiling. “Hello, baby.”

 

"Scully, that's a baby." Mulder still pointed. "Th- that's a, a, a-"

 

"A baby."

 

He nodded stupidly.

 

"Why don't you sit down, Mulder?" 

 

"I should sit down," he said, and sank into a chair. Thank God she suggested it; Mulder had forgotten he could move.

 

Dana picked up the infant and settled it against her shoulder. "Do you want to hold him?"

 

Him.

 

Mulder stared at her, now forgetting he could speak. 

 

If Nurse Scully said Mulder was coming down with something, he'd bet on waking up the next morning with a stuffed-up nose and a scratchy throat. If Nurse Scully said drink orange juice or take an Aspirin or put a hot water bottle on it, Mulder didn’t question her. And if she told Mulder to think of a pregnancy as a threat to her health rather than as a child, he branded any other hope traitorous and stamped it out guiltily. Mulder told himself a thousand times if Dana came back safely, it was enough. They'd figure things out, heal, move on. Emily and the baby boy: wishful thinking.

 

"Mulder?" she repeated.

 

"Yes?" He answered like she asked if he wanted cream in his coffee.

 

They had a baby.

 

Mulder started feeling lightheaded, also having forgotten to breathe. He had nightmares of Dana doubling over in pain, not able or afraid to get to a doctor. He’d envisioned her strapped to one of those metal exam tables underground or in some boxcar with a needle descending into her swollen belly. He’d pictured the label on the filing cabinet: DKS-FWM 1956, a code summarizing a life like a toe tag at the morgue.

 

"Do you want to hold him?"

 

They had a son.

 

He blinked, checking to see if she'd vanish. Life seemed in soft focus. Mulder wouldn't be surprised if it faded completely to black and he woke up aching and alone in his bed upstairs.

 

"You don't have to," she amended.

 

"It's okay? It won't bother him?"

 

Dana looked puzzled. "No, it won't bother him."

 

"Phoebe said it bothered Will if I wanted to hold him for no reason."

 

"Phoebe would. It's okay. Babies like to be held." 

 

Mulder moved his lips silently as she settled the baby into his arms. He stared at the infant. And at Dana, who hovered. Then nervously at the baby, who yawned again, unimpressed. Mulder started to tell Dana to take the baby back before he dropped it when, like with Will, and like God touching Michelangelo's Adam, he felt a spark, an instinctive recognition, a sense of rightness, and nothing in the world would pry him away from that child. 

 

Mulder felt warm, like he slept under an electric blanket, and tingly, as if submerged in ginger ale. The sensation started at the crown of his head and flowed down to his fingertips, pushing aside any other emotion in its path. As it reached his chest, it twinged as an ache got massaged away.

 

Mulder heard him. Not words or even images, but the baby’s physical sensations and the sense of safety and contentment. He felt his son the way he felt his own pulse.

 

He folded the blanket back, enraptured with the scents and textures of a new human being. "Oh my God. Look at these fingers. They're perfect. And blue eyes. He's watching everything. He's so little. What's your name, little guy?"

 

"Mortimer."

 

Mulder glanced up, his mouth open. "You named my son 'Mortimer'?"

 

"No."

 

"Don't tease me, honey," he pleaded. "Not unless you want to see a grown man cry."

 

She smiled and brushed her lips against his cheek. "Benjamin William. Ben. I had to pick, and I knew the tradition of verbs. I thought you'd like a past participle."

 

"Hello, Benjamin," he murmured, and traced his dirty finger over the baby's downy head. Mulder felt the baby feel his touch. "I didn't let myself think it might happen. Last May you said-"

 

"I know what I said." She stroked the sole of a tiny foot that escaped the blanket, and Ben's toes curled under. "But you were right; here he is." She knelt beside Mulder's chair and watched the baby with him. "He's you, Mulder. He watches everything, taking it in. He snores: tiny little baby snores. Sometimes I can't do anything to make him happy; he just wants to be difficult, and I think that's hereditary."

 

Ben closed his eyes again, dozing as he sucked his fist.

 

Mulder studied him, committing him to memory. They did this, he and Dana. They made a life against all odds. A baby was the universe's opinion life should go on.

 

"You did-" He looked at Dana. "You did a good job," he told her. "Thank you." That seemed hopelessly inadequate, so he kissed her, lingering with his mouth against hers.

 

"You're welcome," she answered softly.

 

When they parted, he cradled Ben against his bare chest and nodded toward Emily asleep on the sofa. "I thought the doctors said..."

 

Emily had the same pale, hollow-cheeked look as she did after having pneumonia, except more so. She shifted in her sleep and reached out for her mother.

 

Dana stroked her daughter's hair. "For a few months, she got better. I thought the doctors had been making her sick on purpose. She seemed fine. She even started school last September. But she began having nosebleeds again and catching every germ, like before. It's a matter of time. Soon-" Dana smiled that sad, war-weary smile again. "She wanted to see you, Mulder. Bub and Mulder. You’re all she's talked about for a week."

 

"Is that why you're here?" he asked hesitantly. Dana felt fragile, like the tissue-thin goblets in good restaurants. "Not because you think it's safe, but because... Of Emily? Or the baby?"

 

"I'm here... Because I can't not be here," she answered with her voice quiet and faltering. "If that's all right. I didn't know where else to go, so I drove to New York and my directions said to come here."

 

"Your directions said to come home," Mulder corrected.

 

She looked at Mulder sadly. He went back to watching the baby in his arms, not sure what else to say.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Dana had packed the suitcase in her meticulous manner, but with strangers' clothes, as if filling it with echoes from another life. 

 

Mulder unfolded a light blue waitress uniform, cut loose to conceal a belly, with 'Laura' on the name tag. He found a stain of mustard on the front, and a washed sheet of paper from an order pad in the pocket. It hurt his pride to think of those three things in conjunction: Dana Scully, his baby, and a maternity waitress's uniform.

 

He found half-empty packages of plain socks and white panties, both Emily and Dana-sized, like Dana rushed through the store and grabbed the first things off the shelves that fit. Like someone was sent to buy clothes - generic, all-purpose 'clothes'- and returned with these. The skirts and blouses and pajamas seemed as impersonal as accidentally bringing home a paper sack of another person's groceries.

 

The 'if lost' tag on the suitcase listed 'Donna Sanders,' but had no home address. A folder in the top pocket held a Kindergarten report card from Bellefleur, Oregon, a school picture, a few crayoned worksheets, and a piece of lined paper with 'Katie Samuels' written in a child's careful lettering. A teacher had noted the printing was 'very nice.' Mulder found envelopes: one containing thousands of dollars in bearer bonds and one with a stack of one-hundred dollar bills. There were passports with Dana's photograph, but the names 'Laura Samuels,' 'Donna Sanders,' and 'Dena Martin.' Another folder was thick with medical records, most undecipherable by him, but included a certificate recording the birth of Benjamin William Martin to Marty and Dena Martin on January 24, 1956 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

 

Love grows gradually. It shifts and evolves like a musician who plays a song again and again until he hears it as if for the first time. Sometimes it was possible to fall in love a hundred times in a hundred different ways in the course of a lifetime, all with the same person.

 

"Thank you," Dana said as she emerged from the bathroom enveloped in his old robe and a cloud of steam. "For bringing in my suitcase," she added, seeming puzzled by his intense gaze. "Are the children all right?"

 

"Both little ones are sleeping. The teenage one is doing the best he can," Mulder reported. He pushed a wet strand of hair back from her forehead. "You are beautiful."

 

She half-laughed anxiously and started to pull away.

 

"You don't believe me?" He licked his lips and felt them cool as he inhaled. "I wish I was an artist so I could draw you the way I see you: courageous, noble, strong - a thousand times stronger than I am. It's quiet strength. It's beauty that goes deep and endures, like fine furniture in a world of cheap veneer. You are beautiful. You were beautiful in the Mercy ER - when you smiled and my bleeding head ached less - and you're beautiful now. I don't think I could breathe in a world without you in it."

 

He'd wiped off the oil and dirt, and put on a clean shirt and slacks, but he still smelled of garages and barns and the world of men. She smelled clean: like soap bubbles and warm skin and their old life. Beginning at the base of her throat, Mulder ran one finger down her chest, parting the damp robe. She watched his hand moving. Her throat swallowed as he untied the knot at her waist.

 

"Bed," he breathed into ear, pulling her to him by the terrycloth belt.

 

"Ben will be awake soon," she answered. Dana tilted her head as Mulder traced a tendon down the side of her neck with his mouth.

 

"Is that your way of saying no? Is it too soon?" 

 

"No," she said - letting him kiss her but probably answering neither question. She didn't have to answer; she felt so far away he might as well have been alone.

 

"Dana, what Alex Krycek said about Diana: that was true. About the other women, too."

 

"I know."

 

"I wasn't joking about moving that pencil."

 

"I know," she said again.

 

"I think my father worked with the men who took you. The men who created Emily," he confessed. "Whatever I am, it's purposeful, and it's not meant to be good. I thought, sometimes, in the past year - it wasn't that you couldn’t come back, but you weren't coming back to me."

 

She closed her eyes as he guided her back onto the mattress. 

 

"Are you? Coming back to me?" he asked softly, laying down beside her.

 

"I'm here tonight," she whispered.

 

"What about when I open my eyes tomorrow morning?"

 

She didn't answer.

 

Dana could have returned months ago. Before the baby’s birth, even. Mulder sent the message telling her to return. But she hadn’t. Nor had she telephoned from some Canadian hospital on January 24th to say Mulder had a son, and that son didn’t seem to be the antichrist, and Mulder should come get them. Dana ran, and she’d still be running except she didn’t know where else to run to. Emily was sick, and Ben frightened her, and nowhere felt safe.  

 

Mulder didn't know her plan, and her mind was too stormy for him to tell, but he knew it culminated with him waking up one morning, in the near future, alone.

 

"I can't put you and Will in danger," she said. "Not again."

 

"We're big boys. Life doesn't come with guarantees," he reminded her.

 

She shook her head sadly.

 

"Please don't come here, with them - let me see them, hold them... You can't come to me, be with me," he said inelegantly. "And leave again. I don't care what it takes or what it costs me or who I have to kill, I'm not going to let you. Stay with me. No matter what happens, I want you to stay. I love you." He closed his eyes, kissing along her jaw, down her throat again, and around the ivory coast of her shoulder. "I think I have for forever. It has to take more than one lifetime to learn to love someone this much."

 

He kissed her gently, trying to get her to relax and respond.

 

"I want to be inside you," he whispered to her. He opened his eyes to see her watching him, looking deep into the cluttered, cobwebbed shelves of his soul. "Tonight. I want to feel you. Slow, careful; I promise. I won't hurt you."

 

"You have been inside me," she answered. She moved back and pulled the robe closed. "You were inside me for nine months. I could feel your heartbeat. Sometimes it was the one thing I could feel. Now... All you're going to feel is empty. I can't, Mulder. I thought I could, but I can't. I'm sorry."

 

"Are you worried about another baby?" If they could have Ben, they could have another. "I can fix that, Dana. I'll worry about it tonight, and fix things permanently as soon as playing season is over. I talked to the doctor months ago, and he said there's a few weeks' recovery time. Aside from that-" Mulder shrugged. "It's a minor operation. Effective and permanent."

 

He thought that would make her feel better, but she looked at him even more sadly than before. "I can't," she repeated. "I'm sorry."

 

"It's okay, honey." Like that first night together, not knowing what else to do, he pulled her close to him and put his arms around her, with one hand covering the back of her head.

 

She felt hunted, not empty - like a fox run for hours by hounds. Tired and afraid and alone in an unsafe land. The bow bent to the point it threatened to break. She looked slimmer than Mulder remembered, and completely lacking the roundness that lingered a few months after her last pregnancy. Her breasts were fuller, but her collarbone and cheekbones and ribs more pronounced. She felt fragile, inside and out.

 

She rolled away from him. Dana lay still for a long time, looking out the bedroom window at the river in the distance. Mulder ran his hand down the length of her arm and scooted close to her so they fitted together like spoons. He felt the storm inside her: a chaos of wind whipping and angry clouds colliding. He felt her pain - a raw, deep cut no kiss would sooth, though he wanted so much to try.

 

Mulder interlaced his fingers with hers and shifted his hips against her backside. Raising his head, he nuzzled against her neck again. He could make it stop for a night if she'd let him.

 

"Why didn't you have the vasectomy before baseball season started?" she asked. "If you're sure you don't want more children, you've had months to have the surgery. You've talked with a doctor. Why didn't you do it?" she asked neutrally, but he felt waves crashing against the seawall behind her words.

 

He pushed up on one elbow. He studied the back of her head in his dark bedroom. "Because I didn't know where you were or if you were ever coming back. I didn’t even know if you were still alive."

 

"So if I came back, you wanted to be sterilized,” she supplied for him. “With me, another baby is a risk, and you don't want me at risk. If I never came back, you might want to have more children with someone else, eventually," Dana said logically. "You're healthy. Wealthy. Attractive. You like being married and being a father."

 

"That might be the worst possible way to look at the situation, Dana."

 

"It makes sense, though," she said in the same falsely calm voice. "You thought I was someone else earlier. Madelon."

 

"Will's girlfriend," Mulder assured her. "Maddie."

 

"And your love of the game prompted you to baseball again this season?"

 

"You know why I'm playing again."

 

"You didn't want to, though."

 

He put his hand on her shoulder. "You didn't want to spend the last year on the run. I think it's a fair trade. I play a few baseball games; you keep yourself, Emily, and our son safe." He leaned closer, looking at her. "Are you crying?"

 

"No." She buried her face in the pillow. Her back began to shake.

 

"Yes, you are," Mulder insisted. "You are crying." Aside from the telepathy, he'd been to fancy psychologist school in England; they taught him to recognize these things.

 

He envisioned different events when he suggested they go to bed. It had been almost a year since that last night at The Plaza. Dana was home. Everything was okay. Mulder wanted to make love to her as naturally and miraculously as the spring awakened after a long winter - and she was crying.

 

"No, I'm not," Dana insisted, as she started to sob in earnest.

 

"You are to crying. What's wrong?" 

 

"I'm fine," she said angrily. "I'm just crying. Go check on Ben."

 

"No, I'm not going to check on Ben. He's fine. Please stop. Or at least, tell me why you're crying." He couldn't get her to turn toward him without a wrestling match, so he got up and walked around the bed to her side. He sat down on the edge and pushed her hair back from her face. "Why are you crying, Scully?"

 

“Can’t you read my damn mind?” she demanded, with the pillow muffling her voice.

 

“No. It doesn’t work that way. All I know is you’re crying. Frightened. Angry. But with angry or frightened about what, I don’t know.”

 

"I don't know either," she told the pillow. "I did this. All of this. When I met you, you were an idealistic, trusting man who happened to have a genius IQ and be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. You followed me home to return a dime store lipstick. You should have worn a badge with 'All American Boy' on it. I dragged you into this nightmare of secrets and lies. I did this. I wanted to see you and I wanted to go to bed with you and I wanted to marry you. None of this would have happened to you without me. They almost killed you and they held a gun to Will's head, and when I show up again, you still want to be with me."

 

"You're right, I do."

 

"Even if it means no more children, or if I had lost Ben, you'd still want to be with me. When I woke up in the hospital, after - after the babies were gone - all I thought about was having to tell you, having to face you and how you'd look at me. And you still wanted me."

 

"You're right, I did."

 

"You shot Alex Krycek because I told you to, and you didn't bat an eye. You waited all these months for me. I endanger everyone - including you and your sons - by showing up here because I can't watch my daughter die alone, you still don't bat an eye."

 

He swallowed hard, but said, "You're right; I don't. Anything else?"

 

"Because you found your grandmother's ring for your mother in that Nazi concentration camp, but your mother never called after you were shot. Because your sister disappeared and you still think it was your fault. Because you married Phoebe so Will would have a father. And I'm probably crying because your father cried as he buried your damn dog when you were fourteen."

 

"You're crying because I love you unconditionally and I'm a nice guy?"  

 

She nodded, still sobbing into the pillow.

 

“I slept with your sister."

 

She bolted up with her eyes red and nose swollen. "Missy’s married! Mulder, you did not! Tell me you didn’t."

 

"No, of course I didn't. See? You're not crying. You're yelling." He looked at her a few seconds. Pain radiated from her. "No guarantees," he reminded her. "Whatever comes. I'll take what I can get. And I will handcuff you to the radiator before I let you leave again."

 

"I hate you sometimes, Mulder. Whatever the hell you are. Sometimes, I wish I'd never met you."

 

He kissed her forehead and nervously wiped away the tears. She closed her eyes and leaned against his shoulder. Mulder put his arms around her, keeping her safe from the world for a few more minutes.

 

"I don't think we get a choice," he told her in the darkness. "Whether we love each other. If we meet, if paths cross, a connection is made - fate is fate. All we can choose is what we do with that moment. Hate me all you want, but I think I've loved you for about a thousand years. I hope, a few times, I was able to show you how much."

 

He felt her relax, both her mind and her body.

 

Her breathing was still ragged, but after a few minutes she told him, "You could have not come back to the emergency room at Mercy to get your stitches out."

 

"That was never an option, Nurse Scully."

 

*~*~*~*

 

Entire reels of life got forgotten on the cutting room floor, yet single frames stood out, projected larger than life, dust and scratches and all. This day was one of those frames, dust and scratches and all.

 

Ben was roughly the same age Will had been when Phoebe returned to England, taking William with her. That couldn't have been seventeen years ago; it seemed somewhere between yesterday and an eternity, but not seventeen years.

 

"Mulder?" Dana’s voice whispered. She buttoned her white pajama top as she came down the stairs. "You disappeared."

 

He looked up from his place on the floor. Emily slept on the couch on one side of him and Ben in the basket on the other. "I thought you were asleep. I got up to check on them. I-I was watching them," he answered, his voice hushed by the darkness and roughened by emotion.

 

"Is something wrong?"

 

"No," Mulder answered after a moment's hesitation. "No, I don't think so."

 

As she watched him from the bottom step, the moonlight glowed through the living room window. It outlined her face and made her hair luminous.

 

"I should have been dead for more than a year and a half." He tried to sound casual. He ran his hands over the legs of his trousers. "Eighty-two weeks. That's 574 days, or 13,776 hours. In case anyone was counting," he added. "The doctor said he'd never seen anyone lose so much blood, not breathe for so long, and live. And not have brain damage. The doctor said it with a look of confused disappointment: I hadn't died when he thought I should."

 

"I told you not to," she reminded him quietly and without much energy. "The no-brain-damage part is debatable. No grown man who likes snow cones is completely normal."   

 

"When Will was a baby, I’d go weeks without seeing him awake," Mulder told her. "So, I used to watch him sleeping before I'd go to work in the morning. I had to be at the docks at five, so from four until four-thirty I'd watch him. Make sure he was breathing, make sure he was warm and safe. Once, he woke, so I picked him up, but he started crying and woke Phoebe up. Phoebe was mad, so after that I just watched him."

 

"That's too bad. Anytime a baby cries between one and five in the morning, he wants his father."

 

"Really?" Mulder answered, but realized, "You're teasing me."

 

She shook her head, but she smiled tiredly. Dana walked toward him. She ran her fingers through his hair as she passed. Mulder caught her hand, keeping her close.

 

"I got another year and a half with Will. We have Ben. Not many men get a second chance, but I got two: to live and to be a father again. You gave me both. You did a good job," he repeated. "Whatever happened, whatever will happen - Don't ever think I regret one second of it." 

 

Her smile softened, spreading to her eyes.

 

"You don't seem to believe me, but I owe you so much. I thought of something. A way of redeeming my IOU. The doctors gave Emily blood transfusions; she needs healthy red blood cells, right?"

 

"That's right, but her body rejects them. So to prevent that and suppress her already-weakened immune system, they gave her cortisone, which made her even sicker and less able to fight off infections. It's not a matter of money, Mulder; I'm not doing that to her again."

 

"She doesn't have long at all, does she?"

 

Dana shook her head again. "It's not a good idea to be moving her around, to expose her to new germs, but we've had to move around anyway, and she wanted to see you and Will. I thought you two would like to see her before..." She bit her lip.

 

"What about giving her my blood? I'm O-positive; I can donate to anyone. Maybe she'd be less likely to reject cells genetically closer to hers."

 

"You and I aren't related."

 

He hesitated but said it. "I think Alex Krycek and I are. Somehow. It might buy her some time."

 

"It, it might, if you're compatible."

 

"If I get the equipment, can you do it here? So there's no record at a hospital?"

 

"I could rig a direct transfusion," she responded. "Mulder, you're way ahead of yourself, though. Are you saying Alex Krycek is your brother? Emily is your niece?"

 

"No. I'm not saying he was Emily's father in any classic sense. I don't even think he was a man; I think he was a creation. I think he told me what he was: the next evolutionary step between human and alien. Gibson and I and Sam are the first naturally-occurring step. Emily is the second artificial one, and whatever Krycek was is the third."

 

"I know this is your line, but do you know how crazy that sounds?” Dana argued. “Even if there is extra-terrestrial life, the laws of physics prohibit traveling faster than the speed of light - which they'd have to do to reach Earth. Evolution happens slowly. A species changes over eons."    

 

"Unless evolution and physics have help. I know what I saw. I saw Them creating children exactly as you'd described, and I saw Alex Krycek's body dissolve like a green Popsicle on a hot sidewalk."

 

"You what?" she asked.

 

Mulder forgot she didn't know. For once, he had witnesses, though John Byers jabbered and twitched for days. "His body melted. Ask Will. Ask Byers. After I shot him, he dissolved into a puddle of goo. The other men's bodies did the same thing. The fumes bothered Will's and Byers' eyes, but not mine. That film-"

 

"That film is a hoax to feed a paranoid public, if need be. There are monsters, but they're human monsters in government labs trying to play God with human genetics. And when They fail, this is what happens," she said quietly, gesturing to Emily.

 

"No, I know what I saw. I can put the pieces together, but there's no proof. They repaved the alley near the hospital that night, covering up the manhole we came out of. The door in the vending room opens to a janitor's closet. Gibson vanished, like Diana and Old Smokey and Dr. Calderon. They covered up their mess, but at least they didn't bury us with it."

 

"No," she said softly. 

 

"We made it. You told me there were no guarantees, and I took you at your word and we made it. I still love you, and you still love me and it's all still complicated. No matter what happens with Emily, please stay."

 

"What if-"

 

"What if what, Scully? What if you being here puts us in danger? What if my son doesn't have the genetics They want because it's a recessive gene, but he can pass it on to his children? What if Emily doesn't get better? What if that smoking bastard comes after us, film or no film? What if the Russians drop the bomb and we all vaporize in an instant? What if? Everyone has 'what ifs'; ours are less mundane."

 

Headlights exploded through the living room window. Dana startled. The car engine died and the driver's door opened. Mulder tightened his hand on her arm, and she jumped again, ready to grab a child and run.

 

"Will," he assured her. "It's okay. It's William. He took Maddie home. Don't ask why an hour drive can take two hours; you don't want to know."

 

"It's Will," she repeated to herself, taking a breath.

 

"He's missed you. We both have."

 

They’d spent months expecting Dana and Emily to be in the next room. Last summer, Mulder and Will went to restaurants and requested a table for four instead of two. They never spent another night at The Plaza or in Georgetown. Movers packed everything, and with no regard for what belonged to whom. Mulder’s clothes got mixed with hers: dresses and stockings and sweaters still smelling like her. At first, memories of the Scully ladies lurked everywhere. There was a dollhouse, a little girl's winter coat, miniature saddle shoes and denim overalls. High heels tossed in the box with Mulder’s loafers, and Dana's textbooks boxed up with Will's. A Plastic Muldon wrapped in Charmin rested comfortably in Mulder’s center desk drawer. He and William still stumbled upon a lone crayon or a mate-less lady's glove. Those things got quietly, optimistically moved to the attic - saved, but not commented on.

 

Life went on. It had to. That wasn't disloyalty; it was survival.

 

Will got out of the car. He stood, mouth open, and stared at Dana in astonishment. Mulder saw him blink. The boy slammed the driver's side door and ran toward her. "Dana? Dana!" 

 

She hurried to meet him in the yard. A grin split Will’s face as he picked her up and swung her around. Her bare feet dangled helplessly.   

 

"Easy, Will," Mulder called from the porch, carrying the baby out. "Be careful."

 

Will set her down. He kept his arm around her shoulders as they walked back to the house. "Dana, where have you been? Do you know what a bad cook my father is?"

 

"Yes, unfortunately I do."

 

"Scrambled pancakes are not a real food, are they?" the boy demanded.

 

She shook her head. "No."

 

"See," Will informed Mulder. "Not a real food, Father. Dana, where have you been? Are you okay? Is Emily with-"

 

He glanced again at Mulder sitting on the top step of the broad porch. Will looked a third time, and noticed his father held something in the crook of his arm.

 

"Oh my God," Will said in amazement, stopping short. "What do you have there?"

 

"I have someone for you to meet," Mulder said, and shifted the bundle of blankets.

 

William looked at Dana and then back to Ben's sleeping face. "That's your baby. You and Dad. From last year. You had a baby, Dana," he realized. "The baby that shouldn't be happening, that was going to miscarry but you still wanted to try. This - That's the baby."

 

"You have to stop eavesdropping, son."

 

"That's, that's, that's a baby."

 

"Dana and I had this conversation. Yes, it's a baby."

 

William stood up taller. "I have a little brother. Or sister. Brother?"

 

"This is your brother," Mulder told him. "Emily's asleep in the house."

 

If possible, Will's grin broadened. "These are the colonies and we are the majority," he announced victoriously. "The seat stays up."

 

"William Adam," Mulder said as Will leaned over the baby. "Meet Benjamin William. Ben, meet Will."

 

"You named him after me?"

 

"Yes, Will, I named him after you," Dana responded. "Not Mulder, not my father or brother, not three of his four grandfathers, but you, Will."

 

"Thank you, Dana. It's a good name, little guy. Should they be this little?"

 

Mulder added another frame to his memory as Will examined his baby brother, checking tiny fingernails and miniature ears. "He's four months old. I think you were smaller than this at his age."

 

"I was not," he responded. "May I hold him?"

 

"No, I'm not done yet. Get your own."

 

Still bent over Ben, Will glanced up at his father and asked, "Did you tell Dana?"

 

"Oh, I thought I'd let you."

 

"Uhhh..." Will swallowed nervously. He took a step back.

 

"Go ahead. Consider it practice," Mulder prompted. "You don't get to keep it a secret much longer."

 

"Well, uh-" Will paused again. "I'm getting married, Dana. In two weeks. So you came home just in time."

 

Dana's lips formed some response but no sound came out.  

 

"Keep going," Mulder said, gesturing with one hand for him to continue.

 

"I'm getting married as soon as I graduate. Dad says I have to graduate school first. That's two separate presents: a graduation present and a wedding present."

 

"Okay," Dana agreed, her voice sounding squeaky.

 

"I'm going into the Air Force. I'll be a jet mechanic; I'm signed up. You wouldn't believe what one of those nurses did during my physical examination."

 

Mulder continued waving his son forward like a traffic cop at an intersection.

 

"Her name is Madelon. Maddie. Her father's a chef at one the resorts. I met her in town. She's nineteen. She's French. Daddy-O says I'm marrying you, ten years younger, with my mother's face and a French accent. I think he's daft, but she's great. Maddie's great."

 

Mulder kept gesturing, indicating Will had about one inch to go.

 

"And she's expecting. A baby. My baby," Will clarified quickly. The boy dodged past them and disappeared into the house.

 

"Oh," Dana said numbly, and sat on the steps. She stared at Mulder. She tilted her head to one side.

 

Mulder held up his free hand before she could speak. "He knows nice girls and not nice girls, be a gentleman, wait until you're married. And, since he doesn't want to listen to me, he knows where the drugstore is. Maddie's a nice girl. I thought he was serious about her. Apparently, he was serious, and things got ahead of themselves. He wants to marry her."

 

"He's seventeen," Dana argued. "You can't let him marry anyone."

 

"You can't come back after all this time and tell me what I can do," Mulder warned, his temper flaring. "I know he's seventeen. What's done is done, and Will wants to marry her. I can either let him marry her now, before the baby comes, or he's going to do it the day he turns eighteen, which is after the baby comes."

 

She opened her mouth but closed it again.

 

Mulder explained. "He and Maddie had a car wreck in March while I was in Florida for spring training. The other driver hit Maddie's side head on. By the time I landed in New York, Will was patched up. Maddie's injuries were worse. She started to bleed. The doctors told them about the baby and asked if they should try to save it. He and Maddie said yes. Which the doctors were able to do. Which would make her about four months along."

 

"Seventeen weeks gone," Will informed them from the living room, still eavesdropping and not sounding embarrassed about Maddie once he didn't have to look Dana in the eye.

 

"Seventeen weeks," Mulder corrected, looking down at Ben. "Which would mean I'm almost halfway to being a grandfather."

  

"Wow," Dana exhaled.

 

"Yeah," he answered tightly.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Come Hell or high water, Mulder wouldn’t let them leave, so he had three things to take care of as soon as possible: get married, finagle some blood transfusion equipment, and buy a crib. Also, once Dana saw the ancient kitchen, there would likely be the rapid hiring of a plumber and an electrician.

 

Will helped Mulder put clean sheets on Emily's bed, and went to hunt for blankets in the linen/winter sports equipment/upstairs tool closet. Mulder went downstairs and gathered up Emily. As he picked her up, she flinched and opened her eyes. She weighed about ten pounds less than he expected her to.

 

"Mulder," she said, smiling. "Mommy said we were coming to see you. I'm glad. I'm six and a half, now."

 

He raised her up so he could kiss her forehead. "Hello, little one. You are here, and I'm glad, too. I'm forty-one and a half, now."

 

Ben's basket was empty. Mulder saw evidence of a diaper change. With Will and Mulder occupied upstairs, Dana had managed to recover her baby long enough to change him, and must be somewhere feeding him.

 

Mulder maneuvered Emily up the stairs and down the long hallway, to the bedroom beside his. The furniture from Georgetown was there: the canopy bed, the giant rocking horse, the little light to keep the monsters away, even the threadbare stuffed kitten, bearing crude sutures from his key-ectomy a year ago. Until tonight, Mulder and Will kept the door closed so they couldn't see the room.

 

"Here we are," Mulder told her, laying her back against the pillows. "Okay?"

 

She shifted stiffly, looked around, and asked, "Where's Mommy?"

 

"I think she's with Ben." He folded the sheet up over her and sat on the edge of the bed. "Will and I live here. Out in the country."

 

"Is there a place to put a pony?"

 

Mulder put his hand on her face, cupping her cheek. "There is. We will put a pony in that place as soon as possible, Em. Anything else?"

 

"You shot my real daddy."

 

Not knowing what to say, Mulder nodded.

 

"I told Mr. Skinner when Mommy was in the hospital, so we had to leave while he was asleep. I wasn't supposed to tell. I was Katie Samuels, but Ben was coming too soon and Mr. Skinner said we should call you and you would come. You didn't come, though," she added sadly. "You weren't there. I guess you were here, but Mommy didn't know."

 

"Mr. Skinner at the FBI?" Mulder hadn't heard from him since last spring. He'd given Mr. Skinner a copy of the autopsy film, and a day later, Mr. Skinner said the deal with the smoking man was done and everyone was safe. A few months later, according to the newspaper, Mr. Skinner retired from the FBI. "When Ben was born? Was Mr. Skinner there?"

 

"No, before. When it was still too soon. Mommy was afraid you would get in trouble for shooting my real daddy because I told."

 

That still made no sense to Mulder, but he assured her, "I didn't get in trouble. If I hadn't shot him, that man would have hurt you and Mommy."

 

"That man did hurt Mommy," Emily said, and a chill crept down Mulder’s spine.

 

Will returned, carrying all the blankets from his bed. Will gestured to Mulder he couldn't find Emily's pink blanket; it must still be packed away somewhere.

 

Without speaking, Emily raised her arms. Will set the blankets down and gave her the most careful of hugs. Then, he spread the covers over her and sat on the other side of the bed.

 

She seemed so thin and pale. Every movement looked like it hurt and exhausted her. Mulder was afraid to jostle her for fear she'd shatter like glass. Not long, he told himself, and Will seemed to realize that as well. He and Will sat watching her anxiously, keeping guard but unsure what else to do.

 

"My Mommy and Mulder had a baby," she told William. "That makes you my brother."

 

"I told you: I was your big brother before, Squirt," Will said, and Mulder couldn't possibly have loved him any more. His son leaned closer and whispered, "I'm going to have a baby too, with a girl named Madelon. We’re getting married. That will make you an aunt."

 

"The baby's growing in her womb?" Emily asked. Will nodded. "With sperm from you and a tiny egg from Madelon?" she pursued, and his son looked sheepish.

 

"Yes, explain to him how that works, Em," Mulder encouraged her. "Son, listen to the six-year-old."

 

Emily wrinkled her forehead. "Will Madelon be a Mrs. Mulder, too?" Will nodded again, and Emily sighed. "So many Mrs. Mulders, Bub."

 

"My Mrs. Mulder will be the pretty French one. My mother is the one who talks like I do. Grandmother Mulder is the old batty one, and your mommy will be the boss of everyone. How is that?"

 

Emily nodded. "Mommy cries," she told him confidentially. "She's scared. But I'm not scared. Of dying. You think of all the beauty around you and be happy."

 

Will blinked in surprise, his eyes glistening. He glanced at Mulder as if unsure what to say or do.

 

"You are not going to die, Emily," Mulder told her, his voice hoarse. "You are going to sleep at my new house tonight, and tomorrow we're buying a pony and a crib and I'm going to loan you some of my blood and you're going to get better. I promise, little one."

 

She closed her eyes, smiling. "You're so silly, Mulder."

 

"I am, but I'm telling the truth. You sleep, Em. It's safe here. I'm going to keep everyone safe. I'm going to make sure Mommy doesn't cry anymore."

 

He kissed her goodnight and stood up. His chest still felt tight. Will looked at Mulder, but stayed seated on the other side of the bed.

 

"Are you staying here tonight, baby boy?"

 

"I have to stay here. She has all my blankets," his son explained.

 

Mulder handed him a pillow as he left. "We're right next door."

 

Mulder stopped in the hallway to take a deep breath and calm down. He rolled his neck tiredly and shrugged his sore shoulders. If God existed somewhere in the vastness of the universe, Mulder had a quiet word with him about keeping the promises he'd made.

 

He heard Dana in his bedroom with the baby, and he told her, "Emily's asleep," as he pushed open the door. "Will's-" She was nursing Ben. He looked down quickly. "I'm sorry. I, I didn't realize..."

 

"It's okay, Mulder," she assured him. "You can come in." As he sat down awkwardly on the edge of the bed, she explained, "I know a bottle is healthier, but I have to be in one place to boil water and sterilize bottles and warm formula. Nursing is more portable."

 

"That doesn't hurt?" He snuck a peek, a glance, and made a frank appraisal. He'd be happier about her nursing if she looked like she had the calories to spare.

 

"No, it doesn't hurt."

 

"Okay," he said skeptically, and remembered to tell her, "Will's with Emily."

 

Mulder lay down behind her, still dressed, with his arm folded under his head. He looked past Dana, out the window at the Hudson River and the speckled sky above it. After a while, Dana shifted. She positioned the sleeping baby on the bed in front of her and pulled her pajama top closed.

 

Mulder scooted forward. He put his arm over her and laid his hand on the baby's round belly. Ben felt calm, like a deep, smooth lake. Mulder's own chest still felt so full it ached.

 

He didn't ask her again about making love. Being here - letting down her guard for a night – took all the strength and faith she had left.

 

"I'm so afraid," Dana confessed to the darkness. "I can't remember a time I wasn’t afraid. I keep waiting for the knock on the door, the headlights in the driveway."

 

"You're safe. Everyone's safe," he promised her. "I'm Superman, remember? No one's going to get by me."

 

Her head shifted. "Do you think we were ever those people? Those innocent, crazy-in-love people?"

 

He put his face beside hers, cheek to cheek. "I think we still are those people. You sleep, Scully; I'll keep watch for the bad guys."

 

Sometimes Mulder felt half a beat out of step with life, and this was one of those times. He wanted to fix her, and she didn't want fixed; she wanted to remember how to be still.

 

He pressed even closer to her, draping one leg over hers and both arms around her, surrounding her body. "Relax," he told Dana, and let his mind press gently into hers. Like she had as they made love for the first time, he felt her tense uncertainly. “Let me,” he whispered to her, and pushed his thoughts into hers again. "Trust me."

 

Mulder showed her his memory of standing in the Mercy emergency room, nervous, with itchy sutures in his head, watching her for a moment. He let Dana see herself eating pancakes with Emily at Aiello's at dawn and feel how enchanted he'd been as she shown Emily some sleight of hand, making a quarter bounce magically from one hand to another. He showed her them walking along the cold, deserted Coney Island boardwalk later that morning, with her hair whipping out of place and the blood spatter on the hem of her nurse’s uniform. She heard his voice asking her to dinner on Friday night, and saw herself saying she was completely unsure about a second date, but fate was fate. She felt how he wanted to take her hand, but hadn't.

 

Mulder felt Dana's body startle once she realized they weren't her memories, but his. But she didn't pull away.

 

He showed Dana herself having a pizza pie with him at Patsy Grimaldi's place, sitting near the oven with Emily, and watching the snow falling outside. He showed her how she smiled despite being exhausted and told him about her father taking her sailing on the Chesapeake Bay as a girl. She had a spot of tomato sauce on her chin for a second, and she felt how he wanted to kiss her. There was Emily asleep between them on the drive home, and Mulder carrying Emily up all those stairs for Dana - watching her hips sway as she walked in front of him - and again how he didn't kiss her as he told her goodnight, but he'd wanted to.

 

Mulder showed her their first kiss in The Oak Room's back room, and later how she looked in the box at the opera, watching the stage. How he realized he loved her that night, and his surprise no one complained about him glowing because he was sure he was. There was arriving to pick her up for a date and having Emily open the apartment door, thrilled to see him but stark naked and dripping wet. Dana was twenty steps behind her daughter, carrying pajamas and a towel, and wearing only her slip. Emily jumped into Mulder’s arms while Dana covered her face and laughed in embarrassment as she fled to finish getting dressed. Shopping on Fifth Avenue. Mulder conspiring with the salesgirl at Bergdorf Goodman. Sitting in Central Park later that night, holding hands and watching the snow. Mulder showed her him opening the safe deposit box, getting his grandmother's ring, and taking to the jeweler to be resized.

 

He showed her him talking with Will after school at a Brooklyn diner, and William teasing 'Father likes a girl.' They ice-skated on Wollman Rink, and sat with Will and Em at the movies that afternoon, passing popcorn, wearing 3-D glasses, and watching "It Came From Outer Space." Packing to leave for Christmas, and Will finding the ring. Mulder talking with his son, fourteen, about marrying Dana, and getting Will’s approval. Mulder showed her their trip to Aspen - talking about Mr. Bouncy Bee's misfortune and buying a lake house, and his passionate, though inelegant proposal Christmas Eve. How much he'd wanted her, and how crushed he was she refused to marry him. He showed her the New Year’s Eve party on the roof at The Plaza: her lovely and tipsy in the elevator, and them making love for the first time with the orchestra playing and fireworks exploding outside. Dana leaving, and Mulder sitting alone on the edge of his bed, sweaty and sticky and smelling of her, with his face in his hands, shaking. There was New Year’s Day, when Mulder conned his way into her old apartment building with Will and asked her to marry him. How his heart had surged once she agreed.

 

Dana put her hand over his, weaving their fingers together. She could see what he'd seen, feel what he'd felt. Memories didn't lie.

 

He showed her them making love in Las Vegas and talking about having a baby and making love again in his bed after they returned to New York. Mulder looking at his reflection in the bathroom mirror afterward and swearing that wouldn’t happen again until they married. Him finding her cross necklace and putting it safely in the jewelry box on his dresser, awaiting her return. That Mulder wouldn't let the maids change the sheets that afternoon because they smelled like her.

 

He showed her Dana helping Will with his homework and shopping for groceries with Mulder and watching television while they waited for an apple pie to bake. Mulder reading to Emily until she fell asleep. Mulder alone in his apartment, talking to Dana on the telephone late at night with his hand on his groin. The next night, how they ended up in Dana's bed after Emily fell asleep, shushing each other as clothes got shed hastily. Lovemaking had become less novel and more natural, and Mulder let himself get lost in her. After, his blue-blooded Puritanical upbringing kicked in. He’d been embarrassed, and slipped away as Dana slept. He showed up the next morning, feeling bashful, but she kissed him and made him a cup of tea as though it was normal to love him without reservation. Mulder had breakfast with Dana and Emily before he left to meet the real estate agent about a house in Brooklyn Heights. He showed Dana how her eyes looked and her mouth tasted as he kissed her goodbye, assuring her he'd be back in a few hours.

 

"We still are those people," he promised her again.

 

"Ben's like you, Mulder," Dana confessed softly. "Whatever you are, he is too."

 

"I know. It'll be okay. Trust me. No one's going to get by me."

 

He made lots of promises, even for Superman.

 

He felt her body relax, and she slept.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder saw color in his dreams. Not just red, but the passionate oranges and full, sun-drenched yellows of summer. The outfield grass was a lush green, and the stands a vibrant patchwork quilt of hats and shirts. Overhead, above Yankee Field, he saw a vast, cloudless, seamless blue.

 

In his dream, Mulder sat in the second seat of an empty row in the stands above the dugout. Below him, the team assembled, a fantasy mixture of eras. Babe Ruth was there, wearing the baggy knickers and skullcap uniform of the 1920's, as was Lou Gehrig, tall and healthy. Mulder saw Lefty Gomez, Don Larson, and Bill Dickey. The new stars warmed up: Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra. A young Josh Exley stood on the pitcher's mound like an ebony Adonis, cupping his fingers around the baseball. Exley smiled, and Mulder smiled back, tilting his head knowingly as if in on some cosmic joke.

 

A young couple with an infant made their way up the steps, arguing good-naturedly. Mulder watched them, wistful. They had the symbiotic glow of two people in love with each other for the first time. The man wore an Air Force dress uniform and carried a dark-haired baby. A stylish woman hurried him along, fussing over the baby, and telling him in French they were late.

 

"I know we're late, Maddie," the man informed her irritably, and turned sideways to scoot down Mulder’s row. "I own a wristwatch."

 

Mulder stood as Maddie eased past him. She tiptoed to give Mulder a European kiss-kiss on each cheek. "He is not listening when I am telling him, Monsieur Mulder. I say 'is traffic accident, Guillaume. Is on radio' but he is not listening. We are to stop! To stop on the bridge for twenty minutes. This is why we are too late."

 

"How are we supposed to get to the stadium if we don't go over the bridge?" Will responded as he tried to peel off his jacket and hold the baby at the same time. The Rolex watch on his wrist had belonged to Mulder's father. "I can't bloody well walk on water. Daddy-O, take him for a minute please?" William requested, handing the infant to Mulder. "Jesus, Maddie, you think you have to remind me to breathe."

 

"Guillaume, breathe," she responded.

 

Will glowered at her but licked the tip of her nose affectionately.

 

Mulder cradled the baby and tried to figure out who the little guy might be. He looked familiar, but Mulder couldn't imagine who would let Will look after an infant.

 

"Dad, have you met Luc?"

 

"No, I don't think we've been introduced," Mulder answered uncertainly.  

 

"Luc Guillaume Mulder; Luc, meet Papa."

 

Mulder stared at the baby, who watched him with big, serious brown eyes from underneath a head of glossy black curls. "Papa? My God. Did I miss a few chapters, Will?" Mulder leaned close and asked, "Am I dead again?"

 

"No, you're dreaming. He's not even here yet; don't get all hyped up." Will unbuttoned the top button of his shirt and loosened his tie. On his left hand was a wedding ring which matched the one on Maddie's finger. "The game hasn't started? It's getting late."

 

"This is Luc? This is your son?"

 

William gave Mulder a 'how can you possibly be so daft?' look.

 

"Well, how am I supposed to know?"

 

"Oh, come here, little guy. Come to Daddy before you give Papa a heart attack," Will said. He lifted the baby off Mulder's lap and turned Luc around to see the field. Maddie leaned over to take the baby, but Will refused. "I'm holding him," William insisted. "Get your own."

 

Maddie responded, but her voice blended with the other spectators into a harmonious, expectant hum. Mulder opened his mouth to ask something when he saw Dana approaching. Dana carried a baby, led one toddler and herded another, and tried to keep Emily in motion in front of her. 

 

For the first time in years, Emily moved easily. Em chatted with the fans as she made her way up the aisle. She wore Mulder’s old Yankees cap and a pair of denim overalls. She looked eight or nine; she'd lost her round, babyish cheeks and gained a few adult teeth.

 

Mulder stood again, and took Ben as Dana passed their infant son to him. Mulder looked down curiously as one of the two identical redheaded toddlers squeezed past him, headed for Maddie's lap.

 

"All right. Everyone who was wet is dry, everyone who was thirsty has had a drink, and everyone who's able has been to the restroom. I'm not moving again," Dana said. She sat beside him with the other toddler on her lap.

 

Emily scrambled over Dana, Mulder, and Will, trampling their feet, and sat on the seat beyond Maddie. Emily talked a mile a minute and pointed at the players. Will reached over to pick on Emily; Em picked back and stuck her tongue out at him.

 

"Uh, Dana?" Mulder managed.

 

"Hum?" Dana responded. She arranged the fair-skinned little girl on her lap and put a sun hat on her. The child pulled it off, turning back to frown at Dana. Her dark auburn curls glistened. She glanced at Mulder, and he recognized his own hazel eyes looking back at him. He smiled at her. She furled her brow exactly the way Dana did.

 

"How did we get hazel-eyed, red-headed twins?" he asked. At a glance, William could pass as Mulder's much-younger twin brother; Ben was blue-eyed but dark-haired, and also leaned toward Mulder's side of the family tree. "How did that happen?"

 

"Four glasses of champagne and a midnight offer of a private party," Dana reminded him. She nodded toward Ben. "Take off your shirt, leave on your glasses. I thought you read about this. Kinsey? ‘The Atlas of Human Anatomy?’ My old ‘Nurse's Handbook of Gynecology?’ I know I caught you reading that one, and it has illustrations."

 

"I'm familiar with the math, but I'm surprised at how it works out." Mulder still studied the pretty girls. "What are their names?"

 

"Katherine," she said. "Katie, after my grandmother. The other is Ayla, after-"

 

"After my cousin," Mulder supplied. "How did you know?"

 

Dana put the sunhat on Katie again and, keeping her hand on it so the little girl couldn't pull it off, Dana leaned over and whispered patiently, "This is your dream, Mulder."

 

"Oh," he responded, and nodded knowingly.

 

"Emily said she wanted popcorn. Give me your wallet, Mulder."

 

Moving automatically, he twisted sideways, slid his wallet out of his back pocket, and handed it to her. Mulder looked at the faces on either side of him. He swallowed and jiggled Ben against his shoulder. Something was either very wrong or very right with this universe. "I think I am dreaming, Scully."

 

"Of course you're dreaming, Mulder." She used her soothing 'go with the nice men in white coats' tone.

 

He kept jiggling Ben, who began to protest. "Tell me we're married in this dream."

 

She held up her right hand, showing him the large engagement ring and a wedding band, and pointed to the ring on his hand. "Stop bouncing the baby and ask Will if he or Maddie want anything to eat. Make sure Em hasn't changed her mind again."

 

"All right." Mulder figured someone would clue him in eventually. "Will, do you or Maddie wa-wan tah an, uh, uhh..." 

 

Mulder noticed a girl at the other end of the row. She looked around as though she couldn't remember where she'd been sitting.

 

"Samantha? Sam," Mulder called. She turned her head. Her long brown braids fell over her shoulders as she smiled.

 

She was still nine and wore the same violet dress she'd vanished in that Saturday; Mulder remembered their mother disliking the fashionable hemline that barely covered Samantha’s knees. The dress came from the Montgomery Wards catalog, and Samantha pleaded for it. Their father refused to let Sam cut her hair into a bob, but conceded to a stylish flapper hat, and that hat still had the wilted wildflower Mulder stuck in it. He picked it for her while they played in the woods behind their parents' summerhouse, listening for their father to start the car for a trip to town. Mulder had turned his back and she'd been gone, as though there was an unannounced game of hide and go-seek. She'd won.

 

"Fox? There you are." The close-fitting cloche hat sat so low on her forehead Samantha had to tilt her chin up to peer out from underneath the brim. She sighed and put her hands on her hips, seeming annoyed by Mulder’s three-decade absence. 

 

"We're over here, Sam."

 

She made her way down the row, claiming one of the empty seats on the other side of Maddie. Mulder wanted her to come closer so he could assure himself she was real, but she wouldn't. "There aren't any more seats. I'm fine down here. I was afraid I was lost, Fox," she called to him. "I guess you found me."

 

"I never found you."

 

"I'm right here," she assured him. "I'm fine. Think of all the beauty around you and be happy."

 

Mulder stared at her. Samantha and Emily sized each other up and decided to see if they could both fit in the same seat, squirming and laughing. Katie wiggled down from Dana's lap, discarded the hat again, and joined Ayla in tormenting Maddie, who didn't seem to mind. Mulder started to call the twins to come back, but Dana assured him they were fine where they were.

 

A head appeared over the dugout: one of the long-dead coaches from Mulder's rookie year. "We're ready, Mulder," the man said around a lip-full of snuff. "Are you ready?"

 

"Do I have to?" Mulder asked. Dread swirled around his belly at having to leave his family. "We just got here. I-I'm not, I'm not even dressed. Do I have to play?"

 

The coach shook his head like he thought he heard wrong. "We're checkin' with you. It's getting late. Are you ready?"

 

Mulder pushed his eyebrows together. "Ready for what?" No one asked the players if they were ready to play; the game just started.

 

He looked at the faces around him: to Ben on his lap, to Dana and Will and Will's family, and past them, to Emily and Samantha and the twins. On the field, a young woman prepared to sing “The Star Spangled Banner.” The players lined up, caps off, hands on their hearts, eyes on the flag. Except for Exley. From the end of the line of Yankees baseball players, Josh Exley turned and gave Mulder a momentary grin, like some secret existed only the two of them knew.

 

"Yes, I'm ready," Mulder answered, regardless of why the question was asked.

 

The coach's head nodded and vanished into the dugout again.

 

Mulder draped his arm along the back of Dana's seat. As the announcer welcomed the crowd, Mulder told her, "I'm not sure this is entirely my dream, honey."

 

"Pay attention; everything's starting, Mulder," Dana answered in the dream.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder’s legs and arms worked in unison. The wooden shell whispered across the water, barely skimming it as it raced. The morning sun shimmered across the surface of the river, warming his hair and shoulders. A pretty, petite woman waited on the dock as he passed, and this time, the woman waited for Mulder.

 

He turned and rowed back to her, and he let his boat drift to the short ladder. The baby woke twice during the night to nurse and have a diaper changed, but Dana looked rested and more like her old self. Less hunted. She wore denim trousers, a blouse, and a white cardigan sweater. She carried two cups of hot coffee: one Mulder’s favorite mug and one Dana’s favorite.

 

She was still there. Maybe faith, truth, and love did conquer all. Happy endings existed in a world gone mad. Maybe Mulder had Will take the distributor cap off Dana’s car.

 

"You found your clothes," Mulder observed as he climbed from the boat to the dock. "I told Will to bring them down from the attic."

 

"They were in boxes in the living room when I got up. I was surprised," she added.

 

"At how loose they fit? Or that we have them?"

 

He saw her smile self-consciously, but she didn't answer. Mulder lifted the boat out of the water, carried it a few feet toward the boat house, and set it down. He returned to sit on the edge of the dock with her. Their feet dangled above the water.

 

"Where is Will going?” she asked. “He pulled away from the house as I came downstairs."

 

"He's probably going to early mass with Maddie." Mulder took his cup. "Thank you. He'll be back before I need to leave. I have a game this evening. And tomorrow evening, and the evening after that."

 

"Will’s not Catholic. I remember not being able to roust him out of bed for lunch. William Mulder gets up on Sunday morning to go to early mass?"

 

Mulder blew across the surface of his coffee. "Oh, it's not optional. Wait 'til you meet Maddie; all will be made clear." He smiled at her with sweat still cooling on his skin. "Good morning," he remembered to say.

 

"Good morning," she responded.

 

They sat together, sipping coffee and watching the sun rise over the river. It seemed so normal, like no time had passed at all. Last night still was surreal, but this was the light of day.

 

"A delivery man came," she said. "He said Mr. Frohike sent him."

 

"I called a few hours ago and told Frohike it was for a direct transfusion. Did they send what you need?"

 

"It's rudimentary, but for this morning, yes. If we stay, at some point, we'll need specialized equipment. Everything has to be sterilized; blood has to be stored correctly... It's expensive equipment."

 

"There is no ‘if you stay,’” Mulder informed her. “You’re staying. Call Monday and get this transfusion equipment ordered. Also, call someone about a pony."

 

She sipped her coffee. "You're that sure it will work?"

 

He nodded once, slowly. "She's not going to die, Dana. Not this year, not next year. After that, I don't know."

 

Mulder felt a wave of uncertainly from her - not about Emily, but about him. Dana liked facts and figures - she and Byers were alike in that - and things outside the realm of science frightened her. Byers, after watching Alex Krycek's body melt, had been so rattled he packed up his wife and daughters and moved to France. Byers set foot on US soil once a month, to check on his law firm. Dana sat beside Mulder on the dock, though. The shadows still had eyes, Uncle Sam still wasn't their friend, and she was still there.

 

"William and Maddie will name their son Luc," Mulder told her, pressing his luck. "Luke William Mulder. I like that name."

 

"Can I ask how you know?"

 

"Call it a hunch."

 

"But it's not a hunch, is it?"

 

"No," he admitted.

 

“Mulder, I-” Despite a vocabulary of foot-long Latin words, Dana said, “I’m not okay. I-I don’t know if I can do this. You have my clothes and my coffee mug and my textbooks from a life I barely remember.”

 

“You can. You will,” he assured her. “Trust me. We’re still those people.”

 

The water lapped at the dock, and the sun broke free of the mountains, warming the valley below. At the top of the tallest tree across the river, a Catskill eagle watched them from his perch.

 

"You bought a lake house." Her voice sounded casual; her posture remained tense. "You said we would."

 

"Technically, it's a river house, but you can still sail us into the sunset."

 

"Not unless I want to sail into the bank. The sun sets in the west and the river runs north to south."

 

"Details," Mulder said dismissively. "Dana - marry me?"

 

"Do you even know what river this is and where it flows to, Mulder?"

 

"It's the Hudson River and it flows by Manhattan," he defended himself. "Somehow."

 

"Which side of Manhattan?" Dana pursued. "What does it pass along the way? Can you set sail here and end up at Yankee Stadium?"

 

"Details," he protested again. "Marry me? Make an honest fellow of me?"

 

He got a genuine smile. "You don't know, do you?"

 

"I have to put away my boat, share my blood, and go play baseball for the New York Yankees." Mulder got up and helped her up one-handed. "We Yankees have our own bus and plane, and I'm not responsible for navigating either, Miss Scully. So why don't you stop mocking me, say you’ll marry me, and go fix me some breakfast."

 

"You can hear my thoughts. You can put your thoughts in my mind. You know things no one possibly can. I'm judging by my sample size of one, but I don't think making love is supposed to be quite so wonderful. It's always been nice, but I recall a dramatic improvement about fifteen months ago."

 

"Wait until you see me move a pencil with the power of my mind," Mulder told her, wiggling his eyebrows. "Though, on a bad week, I can go through a half-dozen light bulbs.”

 

He held her hand. Her fingers felt warm from the coffee mug and small against his.

 

“I’m the same guy who followed you home to return your lipstick. The same guy you danced with and made love with and loved. Love,” he corrected. “If I could give you ‘normal,’ I would: a dog and a picket fence and a half-dozen of the most boring children imaginable. Instead, I’m a divorced, over-the-hill baseball player who can move pencils and hear thoughts and kill frighteningly well. Who still can’t change a tire or cook oatmeal or read a map. Whatever I am - it’s the set of the sail. And I want you to marry me," he offered again. “You’re my anchor - you and Will and Emily and Ben - and it’s the set of the sail.”

 

She nodded again.

 

“No more lies, no more running,” he told her. “I want you to stay here and remember what it's like to feel safe. Remember how to be okay. We can raise our children, make a home together, and take whatever comes.”

 

The bald eagle spread his wings and took flight. The eagle dove down and soared up again until he vanished into the sun.

 

"I love you," he told her, and he knew she believed him.

 

She followed him to the boat house, carrying both their coffee mugs. Mulder set his boat on the rack below Will's. He tucked the oars inside it, took an old towel, and wiped the boat down, making the wood gleam.

 

“How long will you be gone?” her voice asked.

 

“This week? Until Friday night,” Mulder answered as he gave Will’s boat a quick wipe-down. “I have to be in New York at noon for a week-long bus trip. This season? On and off until October. I make more money if we win; I get to come home sooner if we don’t.”

 

She didn’t respond. He glanced back at her.

 

Dana moistened her lips. "How long has it been?"

 

He felt the pull of her, as instinctive as leaves turning toward the sun. "Eleven months, twenty-two days, and about three hours."

 

"Come here, mister."

 

He stepped toward her. "I offered last night in a big comfortable bed, and you want to rock and roll in the boat house?"

 

Dana ran her hand under his damp T-shirt and down his hard abdomen.

 

"I'm not that kind of boy, Miss Scully. You have to marry me first."

 

"I think the cat's out of the bag."

 

"No," he said, shying away. "Nice people wait until they get married." She laughed at him. Mulder put one arm around her, kissing her carelessly. "You better marry me soon, woman."

 

"I will," she promised.

 

"Yes?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Really?"

 

"Yes," she echoed, nodding.

 

He took a shaky breath and laughed happily. "Okay."

 

She smiled and kept nodding as he stared at her stupidly. "Okay."

 

He kissed her again, putting both his arms around her, and lifted her off her feet. Time slowed down and for a few seconds, the rest of the universe had to wait as they embraced. They were still those people. Those innocent, crazy-in-love people.

 

They parted, and he lowered her feet to the floor. Dana looked past him, at a radio-controlled toy boat on a shelf. She stared at it, perplexed. "What is that, Mulder?"

 

"It's Will's. He got it when he was nine," Mulder said. "We saw a man with one in D.C. before they were popular. Will liked it, and I had one made for him."

 

Dana kept looking at the boat as if trying to remember. He watched her face change as she did. "I was waiting for John. A handsome man with a little boy kept watching me while his son piloted the toy boat. People watched him, whispered about him, like he was someone famous, but he only paid attention to me and the little boy. You were that man. The boy was Will."

 

"I couldn't work up the nerve to walk over and talk to you. I've never been good at chatting up women; that's where alcohol or head wounds came in. I hoped you'd come over to look at the boat, but you didn't. I thought about going after you, but I didn't. So that day, we didn't meet." Mulder smiled at her stunned disbelief. "I told you it was fate."

 

She still looked between Mulder and the boat, astonished into silence.

 

He took her hand and led her along the path to the house. "From now on, I think you should take everything I say as canon."

 

"Well, that's certainly not going to happen,” Dana promised. “By the way, Mulder, do you have any idea what happened in your oven?"

 

"Does it look like it used to be a pizza pie?" he asked. "If so, I was supposed to do something about it two months ago."

 

"Well, it's never too late."

 

Ignoring that, Mulder informed her, "The Hudson River is on the New Jersey side of Manhattan, so - no, we couldn't sail to The Bronx because that's the Harlem River. Also, there's a sea serpent named 'Kipsy' that's been sighted in the Hudson River since 1871, but I don't know where. I still haven't checked out Abraham Lincoln's funeral train, but I do know the Hudson Valley is due for another appearance of Catskill Gnomes again in 1969."

 

"Gnomes?"

 

Mulder nodded enthusiastically. "Henry Hudson's Catskill Gnomes. They've appeared every twenty years since 1609, like clockwork. It's a historical fact. I got a book from the public library in town. The Headless Horseman. Rip Van Winkle. This place is a hotbed of paranormal activity."

 

“And to think I worried about the telepathic, telekinetic genes with Ben,” Dana said sarcastically.

 

“I bought a home movie camera in case I get a glimpse of Kipsy or one of the gnomes. However, if you want - I don’t know how we’d ever get the film developed, but-” Mulder squeezed her hand encouragingly. “How do you feel about thoroughly documenting our honeymoon?”

 

She blinked at him again and shook her head. "Mulder, if we’re going to live here, I'm calling a plumber and an electrician on Monday morning. The kitchen faucet leaks and the cook stove and icebox are on their last legs."

 

Mulder saw Frohike walking around the house. Frohike looked worried, and about to make his way toward the river. Mulder hadn't invited his agent to drive up from New York, but he wasn't surprised Frohike had. Spotting Dana with Mulder, Frohike grinned and started toward them as quick as furry, twenty-eight inch legs would carry him.

 

"You call anybody you want while I'm away, as long as you call a judge and whoever else it takes to put on a wedding," Mulder told Dana. "I'm calling Byers and asking him to be here next Saturday morning.” As Frohike approached, Mulder whispered to her, “And buy some 8mm film."

 

Dana squeezed Mulder’s hand hard enough to make him say “Ouch.”

 

Frohike stopped in front of Dana. He looked her up and down, and hugged her awkwardly. "You'd put the tall men in the FBI to shame, Miss Scully," Frohike told her proudly, referencing some joke Mulder wasn't party to. "You, Emily, a baby boy: I hear all missions were successful?"

 

"I had to drug Assistant Director Skinner at one point," she told him.

 

"Excellent!" Frohike responded. "I would pay to hear details, sailor."

 

"So would I," Mulder chimed in, perplexed. "Does that mean we shouldn't invite him to the wedding? I was going to call him, too."

 

"A wedding? Excellent!" Frohike repeated even more enthusiastically. "When? I will get a haircut and rearrange my social calendar."

 

"Next Saturday morning." Mulder’s palm felt warm against Dana's.

 

"Excellent," Frohike said yet again, seeming wholly pleased with himself. "I'll bring my sister; she can clean my apartment some other day. Langly says he has a new source, but he and I can discuss anytime how the CIA orchestrated a coup in Guatemala. None of my players have a game until four, and dry cleaning, shmy cleaning: it can wait." Frohike stuck out his chest. "I'm going to a wedding."

 

Mulder started chuckling and couldn't stop. Frohike joined in even though Mulder didn't think he was entirely joking about his plans for next Saturday morning.

 

Dana shook her head at them. "Do you want breakfast, Mr. Frohike? I need to get Mulder and Emily hooked up so he can leave on time, and I thought I'd make pancakes. Mulder, you can eat pancakes one-handed now, can't you?"

 

Both men nodded.

 

"Don't you forget about that blue pizza, Mulder," Dana commanded as she turned away.

 

As she walked toward the house, Frohike looked Mulder in the eye and told him, "That is one hell of a woman."

 

"You're telling me," Mulder responded again.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Once of the benefits of being a living legend of the game was they let Mulder use the telephone in the coach's office. Through the glass window, he could see but not hear the other players getting ready in the locker room. Mulder had his uniform on, his cleats laced up, and his cap and glove on his lap. He leaned back in the coach's chair. He talked to Will first and to Dana briefly, but he'd call Dana later, after the game. This call was different.

 

"Hello, Mulder," a little girl's voice answered. "Are you in George's Town playing baseball?"

 

"I'm pretty close to George's Town. We'll have to get you a map so you can keep track. The game starts in a few minutes."

 

"Mommy's listening to you on the radio in the horrible kitchen. Am I on the radio?" Emily called, "Mommy, can you hear me talking to Mulder on the radio?"

 

Mulder chuckled. He propped his feet up on the metal desk as he heard Dana explaining to Emily neither of them was on the radio; those were people talking about the game, which was about to start.

 

Emily picked up the telephone again, seeming unconvinced because she whispered, "Mommy said the common tators are talking. I'll be quiet. People might want to hear the common tators more than my story."

 

"I don't know; it's a good story, and common tators can be boring."

 

"Oh. You're on the television news. Will and Maddie and I are waving to you."

 

"I'm waving back," Mulder assured her.

 

"I can see you," she whispered. "Hello, Mulder."

 

"Hello, Emily."

 

"You're still waving on the television. You're hitting a baseball. You're catching a baseball. Oh, you dropped a baseball. You didn't say 'Hello, Emily' on the television."

 

"That's because I said 'Hello, Emily' on the telephone. It's not me on the television news," he tried to explain.

 

"Who is it?" she said, forgetting to whisper. "He looks like you. Never mind, Mulder. Now it's not you. It's Don Larson, the legendary Yankees pitcher. You can read my real story. I'll tell you if you’re on television again."

 

"Thank you, Emily," Mulder said. "Do you have your book? Tell me when you're ready." He didn't have his copy, but he didn't need it anymore.

 

"I'm ready," she said. "Page one."

 

"Page one. There was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid," he told her, emphasizing the 'really.' "He was fat and bunchy, as a rabbit should be; his coat was spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears were lined with pink sateen..."

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder stayed in the hot shower until his fingertips wrinkled, but his shoulder and knee still ached. Two more games to go in D.C., and already he hurt. After he got out and toweled off, Mulder pulled on a clean pair of shorts with 'Dad' written in them, laid down stiffly on the bed, and reached for the telephone.

 

Dana answered quickly enough on the other end she must have had his telephone in bed with her in New York.

 

He said hello and, "I can't move. I need a nurse urgently. Baseball is not supposed to be a contact sport."

 

"Are you okay? The commentator said you hit the outfield wall hard."

 

"I caught the ball, though. The doctor checked me out and I'm okay. Just sore. They sent me back in to run fast nine times, bat two more times, and slide. I hate sliding - hence all the homeruns."

 

"I heard," Dana agreed, her voice soft in the darkness. "They said crowd was on its feet, cheering. I wish I could see you play."

 

"That can be easily arranged." Mulder rolled onto his stomach. "What did you think of Maddie?"

 

"She's not what I was expecting, but I liked her. She adores Will, and she does keep him in line. Emily told her she talked funny.” She paused. “Where did she learn English?"

 

"The Institute of Random Conjugation, I think. She's a nice girl, Dana."

 

"They're so young."

 

"Lots of couples are. I have-" Mulder searched for the right word. "Concerns: about the baby, about him being seventeen, but this what he wants. He wants Maddie and the baby and to join the Air Force. I've offered everything I can think of to get him to go to college or trade school, but he doesn't want to. He's not a scholar. Neither is Phoebe."

 

"How is Phoebe?" she asked, and he heard the bed shift. "I meant to ask."

 

"She's been out of the asylum a few months; she says she's better. She calls occasionally; we talk. Will drives down to Manhattan to see her, but she's unaware she's going to be a grandmother. Will says he's telling her soon, and I'm hoping to be there with a camera to capture the moment. I think the one photograph will make all those alimony checks worthwhile. How's Emily?" Mulder asked.

 

"Better, I think. Fewer nosebleeds today. She ate dinner, and I know she has more energy. She liked talking to you on the phone."

 

"I thought she sounded better. How's Dana?"

 

"I miss you. Which hotel are you staying at in DC?"

 

"The Willard. If I’m in DC, it's where I stay."

 

"You aren't in the same room, are you?" she asked curiously.

 

"I am in the same room, and in the same bed. Alone. It seemed like a good idea when I requested it." So late at night, everyone else should be asleep in the Hudson Valley. Emily would be tucked in, and Will would be snoring softly, and Dana would be alone Mulder’s bed. Perhaps she wore her white pajamas. Or she had on Mulder’s T-shirt, with her hair pulled up and her glasses on as she read by the bedside lamp. Despite being hundreds of miles away, Mulder liked the idea she slept in his bed, she waited for him. No matter how far he traveled, she would always be home.

 

"That was a nice New Year’s Eve. So was the previous one," she reminded him.

 

Mulder shifted his hips against the firm hotel mattress. "Do you remember my plan this morning about waiting until we’re married?" Dana said she did, and he told her, "I'm revising my plan, Nurse Scully."

 

"You are?" she said in a low voice. "Why, Mr. Mulder?"

 

"You know why," he told her huskily. He heard Dana chuckle, but Ben mew. "Are you nursing the baby?"

 

"He was hungry."

 

"Oh, you're not helping me," Mulder said desperately.

 

"If I was there, I would be happy to help," she promised in that same seductive voice. "As it is, you’ll have to handle your problem on your own."

 

He sighed in tired, horny, sore frustration.

 

"When will you be home?" she asked.

 

"Friday evening," Mulder told her, not missing she said 'home' rather than 'back.' "Did you telephone the wedding people?"

 

"I did. I called Mr. Frohike's secretary, told her what we wanted, and she did the calling from there. All we need to provide is guests." She paused. "Would you do something for me?"

 

"As long as you keep your blouse off and it doesn't require me moving."

 

"I want you to call the deputy sheriff in Bellefleur, Oregon, and invite him and his wife to the wedding."

 

Mulder wrinkled his forehead. "Dana, I don't know the deputy sheriff in Bellefleur, Oregon."

 

"I know him."

 

"Why can't you phone him?"

 

"I want you to do it."

 

"Okay. Whatever you want," Mulder agreed uncertainly. "Would you like to tell me why I'm inviting a deputy sheriff in Oregon to my wedding?"

 

"Because he's a friend." Changing the subject, she asked, "Is Mr. Frohike driving you home or do you need someone to pick you up at the stadium?"

 

"I'll need a ride. Did you get the movie film?”

 

Mulder heard silence that lasted a second to long. “There will be no naked home movies, Mulder. Not unless it’s me filming you.”

 

He nodded, but realized he had to tell her, “Okay. That’s fine. And Scully-" He shifted his hips again. "If you pick me up, wear a skirt. Skip the damn girdle. Be nice to me, and I'll show you what the New York Yankees’ locker room looks like after hours." He knew she wouldn’t leave Ben and Emily long enough to pick him up, but contemplating was still pleasant. Mulder faced a week of sleeping in hotel beds, eating room service alone, and worrying about everyone back home. He rolled to his back, slid his hand to his groin, and began contemplating to her voice. “What do you think?” he asked huskily.

 

The baby mewed again. Fabric rustled over the long distance line. “Mulder, are you doing what I think you’re doing?”

 

“No,” he said, but amended, “Maybe. You told me to handle my problem on my own.”

 

She laughed softly. The sound both soothed and made him ache more. Mulder didn’t know which was worse: the last eleven months wondering of if Dana was alive somewhere or the last twelve hours of knowing her exact location but not being there.

 

The games and weeks and months of baseball season stretched out before him. He hated each moment away from her in advance.

 

Mulder moved his hand back to his abdomen. “I wanna come home,” he confessed tiredly. “I wanna see you. See everyone. This game stopped being fun a decade ago, when I had no one to go home to. Now you’re there, and you need me, and I’m off playing baseball.” 

 

He expected Dana to be the voice of reason, the backbone of fortitude. Instead, she said, “Get in a car. Or on an airplane. Come home,” she urged. “You can be here by morning. Can you do that?”

 

“Not unless I want to give the Yankees back a really big check.”

 

“Mulder, I-I tried,” Dana’s voice faltered. “but I was in the hospital with Ben, and Emily got sick again, and the bill when Ben was born-”

 

“Stop,” he said firmly. Mulder had Frohike put the cash Dana brought back in the bank and the bonds in the safe deposit box. He had no idea how much money remained. “You did what I asked you to do. You kept yourself and Emily and Ben safe, and you came home. You did a good job. Now, this is my job.” Mulder tilted his head side-to-side tiredly. “I’m lonely. Sore. Worried.”

 

The long distance line crackled.

 

“Do your job,” she advised him. “Have room service bring you two Aspirin, a glass of orange juice, and a heating pad. Find something to watch on the television set or talk to me until you get sleepy. And don’t worry about us. Do your job and come home. To us,” she added. “You waited for me. We’ll be waiting for you.”

 

His shoulder and knee hurt less already.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Except for a few casual friendships, Mulder wasn't close to his coaches or fellow players. 'A private, dignified, thoughtful man,' the reporters wrote, only because they never saw Mulder in a watermelon seed-spitting contest with Will. Mulder might have dinner with Berra on a road trip or ask about Larson's family, but he didn't carouse with the young hot shots. His teammates - many two decades his junior – addressed Mulder as 'sir' and left him alone. Which meant road trips got awfully lonely.

 

As his teammates left, at least a dozen asked if Mulder needed a ride home, not knowing Mulder headed upstate rather than downtown. Will was on the way, so Mulder declined. It still felt nice being asked, though.

 

The players' lot emptied of expensive sports cars. The team bus pulled away, leaving Mulder alone in front of Yankee Stadium with his suitcase in hand. The team arrived early and William must be running late.

 

Mulder waited a few more minutes. He glanced at his watch. Bored, Mulder walked to a gate. Rather than getting out his key, he checked no one watched, and he touched the padlock. It unlocked. He walked inside, through the low tunnel and out onto the silent baseball field.

 

The evening sky swirled purple and orange. The grass was a lush green, and Venus rose. On the pitcher's mound, wearing a uniform from an old Nevada Negro league, stood a young Josh Exley. Exley watched Mulder with that Mona Lisa smile.

 

Rather than being surprised, Mulder found himself smiling back. "You were in my dream," he told him.

 

Exley shook his head, protesting his innocence. "They don't let Colored folks in white folks' dreams."

 

Something was odd about how Exley spoke – like he moved his lips in afterthought. Like a movie with the soundtrack out of synch. Mulder heard Exley inside his mind too, but not the way he heard Dana. He didn’t get a jumble of words and sensations to sort out and make sense of; hearing Exley felt like being submerged in a river and having it flow easily all around him.

 

"Mr. Exley, I don't think you're 'folks.'"

 

In answer, Exley picked up a new baseball from the bucket beside him. He raised it to his face and smelled it. "You waitin' on the missus?"

 

"My son. My older son." Mulder used that phrase for the first time. Except for Frohike and Byers, Mulder hadn’t told a soul. The news would break eventually, but for now the fewer people who knew about Ben, and that Dana and Emily had returned, the safer. "The missus is back at the ranch. We have a little girl who's sick and a new baby. So my older son is coming."

 

"I've seen him with you. Here. He a good boy."

 

"That he is," Mulder agreed.

 

"So you have a few minutes?" Exley asked.

 

Despite Nurse Scully’s orders, Mulder had a mental agenda of things to worry about. Besides getting married in the morning, he could wax neurotic about Emily and Ben. Will and Maddie, and their baby. The eyes on the shadows and those government files and whatever the doctors autopsied on the film Dana stole.

 

Exley stood in the pitcher’s mound and toyed with the ball. While Mulder worried, joy radiated from Exley: Christmas morning and grass wet with dew and the tiny, perfect soles of a baby's feet. He loved baseball in a way Mulder had forgotten.

 

"Do you have a few minutes?" Exley repeated.

 

"That I do." Mulder set down his suitcase. He took off his suit coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves. He spotted a single wooden bat on the rack - his bat, of course. He picked it up, took a few practice swings, and walked up to the plate like he had thousands of times. "What were you doing in my dream?"

 

In answer, Exley launched a fastball.

 

Mulder swung the bat. He heard a sharp crack, and baseball became sandlot ball and endless boyhood summers again.

 

"I did some checking, Mr. Exley,” Mulder told him. “In 1947, Jackie Robinson played for the Dodgers, and the Yankees came looking to sign you. You could have been one of my teammates, except your performance with big league scouts in the stands was oddly poor. Must have been an off day for you. Then you disappeared."

 

"Funny how that worked out, wasn't it?"

 

"Any chance you'll tell me what you are?" Mulder got ready for the next pitch. "Because I think I've seen a film of one of your late relatives."

 

"I been a lot of things. Been a traveler. Been a blues singer-" Exley pitched again. Mulder sent the ball sailing into the outfield. "Been a soldier. Been a baseball player." A curve ball, which Mulder hit expertly. "Never been a husband or a father, though," Exley continued. "Didn't seem fair to leave a woman and children behind when I had to go."

 

"It's not fair. But sometimes you do have to go."

 

"That you do," Exley agreed.

 

Mulder stopped asking questions and hit the baseballs. He felt the bat beneath his palms and watched the balls arch into the sky and disappear. His shoulder didn't ache, his hand didn't go numb, and no one made him run. He didn't have to think about batting averages or press releases or anything except making sure his bat met with the ball at the crossroads between Heaven and home plate. For a few minutes, as the sun set, the game had magic.

 

"Your boy's here," Exley said. A few seconds later, Mulder felt William as well.

 

Mulder couldn't sense Will like he could Ben and Dana. Most of the time, Will was a radio he heard only if he listened closely. Mulder seldom sensed Maddie at all. And Maddie’s baby- If Mulder tried, he could tell Maddie felt tired and sometimes queasy or dizzy or anxious. He could have deduced she was expecting, but he didn’t sense it. Or sense Maddie’s baby like he’d sensed Ben. Of course, Mulder couldn’t put his hand on his son’s fiancée’s belly to try to feel the baby, either.

 

"You wait," Mulder instructed Exley. "I want him to see you."

 

Will, likely noticing the unlocked gate, had walked inside looking for his father. Mulder yelled for him. His voice echoed through the tunnel.

 

"Am I late?" Will called back, meeting him halfway.

 

"We were early. Come here," Mulder requested. He walked quickly back through the tunnel to the stadium. "Guess what I've been doing?"

 

Mulder saw Will take note of the suitcase dropped near the dugout, and Mulder’s suit coat thrown carelessly over it. A bat lay beside home plate. A bucket of balls, almost empty, sat beside the empty mound.

 

"Pissing?" Will guessed.

 

"Sober as a judge." In the outfield, shadowed by the wall, an old Negro man in a groundskeeper's uniform collected baseballs. Exley raised his hand at Mulder. Mulder waved. "There's Mr. Exley," Mulder told William.

 

Will waved politely, seeming unimpressed.

 

"Maddie's coming to dinner. Dana's making a roast and a pineapple-upside down cake," his son told him. "Dana said to fetch you, fetch Maddie, and come home straight away."

 

Mulder picked up his suitcase. He put his arm around Will's shoulders as they walked off the field. There was magic in young love and pineapple-upside down cake, too. "That is definitely what we should do," he told him.

 

*~*~*~*

 

When it was real, the American dream fulfilled every promise. Love felt as wonderful as hitting a homerun and as frightening as a roller coaster at the top of a hill. To come home from work after a long week - tired, sore - to dinner cooking and children happy to see him and a woman who loved him. Help dry dishes, carry laundry in from the clothesline, read a bedtime story, and let the cat out to prowl. At the beginning of the night, to shave and wash away the day. To stretch out on cool, clean sheets and take her in his arms. That moment with Dana had a beautiful, fragile normalcy to it, and Mulder would kill anyone who tried to take it from him.

 

The metal fan from Dana’s old Georgetown apartment stood in the corner of his bedroom. It hummed rhythmically as it blew cool air across their bed. Curtains fluttered, frogs called to each other, and the full moon rose huge and blue outside the open window. The radio played soft, hypnotic Delta blues. The top sheet and blanket got pushed away, and a pillow slid to the floor with a sigh. Dana’s bare body felt smooth and warm, and warmer still in the secret places inside her.

 

"We need to make a decision," Mulder reminded her in the darkness. 

 

Her full breasts seemed sensitive to his hands and lips. Even so slim, her abdomen felt soft.

 

Dana didn't answer.

 

Mulder told her, "Will asked me this evening if he could be with Maddie: with a baby coming, once they married."

 

Dana shifted against him, luxuriating in his touch like a cat. "And what did you tell him?"

 

"He absolutely could not. He’d hurt the baby." He paused dramatically, and grinned. "You should have seen his face."

 

"That was mean, Mulder."

 

"Once William got the car back in the correct side of the road, I told him to be gentle, but they could unless the doctor said otherwise. I told him to pay attention to his wife, though,” Mulder said. “To make sure he listens to what she wants, not what he wants to hear.” Mulder charted a course with his lips down Dana’s throat and across her collarbone. "So... We're getting married in eleven hours. You have my full attention, Scully. What do you want?"

 

He didn’t question whether they would make love, but whether they would tempt the Fates, press their luck again. He and Dana had Ben; they had their miracle. Mulder’s head said to play it safe, and he made a stop at the drugstore yesterday to that end. His heart told him to go for double or nothing.

 

"Dana..." he prompted. He lay in bed with her, skin to skin, for the first in eleven months, twenty-seven days, and about twenty hours. Mulder paid for a private telephone line, but if the operator in Kingston eavesdropped on Mulder and Dana’s late-night conversations this week, she’d overheard some titillating exchanges. Dana unpacked his suitcase this evening; she knew Mulder had the prophylactics. And a visceral place inside her body craved his body. Mulder felt it: a moth to a flame, iron to a magnet. Whatever her decision, he urgently wanted her to make one.

 

"It's such a remote chance, Mulder. I had so much trouble with Ben, I can't imagine... I'm even less likely to conceive while I'm nursing," Dana said by way of not answering.

 

"Let's not play dice. Yes or no?" He moved over her, his bare chest against hers, and whispered into her ear, "What do you want?"

 

"There's nothing about you I don't want," she said softly, all blue eyes and pale skin in the moonlight.

 

He felt the old, orange glow tingling inside his belly, and spread down his arms and legs. "You remember what happened the first time you told me that?"

 

"You don't know it was that night," she reminded him practically.

 

"Yes, I do," Mulder assured her. On the radio, Robert Johnson's slide guitar continued to play, wailing softly at the night. "Do you want to know when it was with Ben?"

 

"Take off your shirt, leave on my glasses?" she guessed, and he nodded.

 

Except for the breeze from the old fan, the bedroom was warm. Summer began to take hold of the Hudson Valley. Mulder’s skin grew slick, and he smelled her: Ivory soap and babies and musk. She tasted like the ocean, and pulled at him like the outgoing tide.

 

He pressed against her. She made a sound between a sigh and a soft moan.

 

"I want you to do something for me," he requested. Dana wrapped her top leg over his hips. His body began to press carefully into hers.

 

Dana ran her fingers through his hair. She rested her hand on the back of his neck. "I'm marrying you in the morning," she assured him. After a second, Dana added, "I don't know where those glasses are."

 

"I want you to live to be at least ninety,” Mulder requested. “And remember this night, and when you're very old, still smile that enigmatic smile of yours as you think about it. As you think about me. Will you promise me you'll do that?"

 

Dana looked up at him. "You won't be around to remind me?"

 

Mulder kissed her forehead. "In case I'm not."

 

One song on the radio ended, and another began. This musician sang sadly how all his love had been in vain. The brightest love left the deepest marks.

 

"Are you going somewhere?" Dana asked.

 

"Not if I can help it," he answered. "Not unless I have to."

 

The night sky was cloudless - vast and open – as if only the moon and the stars watched from the heavens. He and Dana lived not beneath the constellations, but among them. Mulder felt it: somewhere, something incredible out there waited to be known.

 

Her lips brushed against his, inviting him in. "I promise."

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder felt a storm approaching. The pressure rolled toward him the way it did in the Great Plains. He lay in the borderland of sleep: bone tired, satisfied, limbs too heavy to move. Dana slept peacefully with her hair tousled and her bare arms and legs jumbled with his beneath the sheet. Mulder put his hand on her hip, slid it to her waist, and shifted his body against hers. She exhaled and put her hand over his, interlacing their fingers.

 

The real thing was worth the wait.

 

The night cooled but the fan still worked diligently. Mulder should get up, turn the fan off, and close the windows before the storm came. Ben slept in a crib in the corner of their bedroom, but Mulder should check on Emily. He put it off as long as possible. When the goose bumps started, he got up and reached for his trousers. 

 

Dana rolled over. She ran her hand across the mattress, as if sensing the loss and searching for him.

 

Mulder switched the fan off.

 

Ben lay awake in his new crib. The baby stared up at a wooden mobile of animals Dana hung there. Mulder watched the baby a moment and gave the mobile a spin. In a few seconds, the spinning stopped and the same little buffalo hung above Ben's face.

 

He turned the mobile again. Ben looked at Mulder, and at the wooden rabbit and horse and bear. Again, the buffalo returned to hang a few feet above the baby's face.

 

"You like that one best?" Mulder asked him.

 

Mulder still sensed the pressure from a storm but felt no wind when he went to the window. Outside, the tree leaves remained quiet. The moon was high in the sky. Fog rolled in, flowing from the riverbank and toward the house like a living thing.

 

Mulder let his mind stretch out. He tried to sense what was out there that shouldn't be. His skin still prickled. The hair on his arms and chest rose.

 

Something was coming.

 

The bed shifted as Dana woke. Mulder saw her pull the sheet around her and look around uncertainly. She must sense it, too. It wasn't Ben. Something was out there - something like Mulder had never felt.

 

Something was coming.

 

"What's happening?"

 

"I'm not sure. Probably nothing. I'll check it out. Stay here," Mulder ordered her.

 

Something was coming. Whatever it was, Mulder wasn’t letting it take Dana. Or Ben. Or Emily. Or any of them.

 

He touched the top edge of the tall wardrobe. A loaded pistol slid across the polished wood and into his hand.

 

In her bedroom, Emily sat up, awake. "Can you go to Mommy?" he whispered. She nodded, got stiffly out of bed, and moved past Mulder, quiet as a mouse.

 

Down the hall, Will's bedroom door opened. Will had a rifle tucked under one arm as he fastened his blue jeans. He was barefooted, bare-chested, and his hair looked mussed. He muttered irritably he was hurrying and for his father to "Stop bloody yelling," though Mulder hadn't said a word to William aloud.

 

"Who's outside? What's happening?" Will asked.

 

"I don't know," Mulder said. "I want you to stay with Dana and the children."

 

A second later, Maddie peeked out of Will's bedroom. She wore Will's white button-up shirt, which reached her mid-thigh. Her feet and legs were bare.

 

"William!" Mulder said sharply. "You are not married yet. You were supposed to take her home. This was not the plan when we talked earlier."

 

Dana stepped out behind Mulder. She carried the baby and wore Mulder's robe. Aside from looking petrified, Dana had the same mussed, satisfied glow as Maddie.

 

"This is not okay, William," he scolded.

 

"Oh, pot, kettle, black." Will slid the new rifle's bolt forward and locked it.

 

"We're discussing this later," Mulder promised as he racked the pistol, putting a round in the chamber.

 

Mulder tucked the pistol into his waistband and, once he reached the living room, retrieved his old M1 Carbine rifle from the top of the coat closet. He shoved the magazine in place and became a soldier again. He'd been a very good soldier. Whatever lurked outside, whatever they wanted, they would be disappointed.

 

"Mulder?" Dana said from the bottom step, with Ben in her arms and Emily behind her. Maddie stood on the landing with her arms wrapped around her body as if she was cold. Her eyes were wide, and a Mulder noticed the faintest hint of a little belly.

 

Will's baby, Mulder realized. Whatever, whoever lurked outside: they could be coming for Will's baby, as well.

 

"Stay inside," Mulder responded. Everyone followed Mulder and Will to the front porch, so he tried, "Stay here."

 

Through the fog, through the trees, Mulder saw a light in the distance. It called to him like a siren, seductive.

 

Maddie squatted down and pulled Emily against her. Dana still held Ben. Will raised his rifle and scanned the silent darkness.

 

"Stay here, Will. Stay with them,” Mulder told him. “If anyone except me comes back, shoot them. Don't hesitate, son."

 

"Mulder, don't!" Dana pleaded. “Mulder-”

 

"Dad-"

 

"Keep her here, Will, no matter what," Mulder ordered as he stepped off the porch and into the fog. "Keep Maddie here. Don't let anyone leave."

 

Mulder felt oddly calm, like he stood in the eye of a hurricane. The pull felt stronger, more focused. It tugged at the base of his brain, patient but insistent.

 

He had to go.

 

Will must have held Dana back, because Mulder heard Dana yelling and struggling on the porch, behind him. "You promised, me," he heard her scream, and he knew he had promised. "Mulder!"

 

Her voice echoed after him. He knew they were frightened. Mulder was sorry, but he had to go.

 

As he walked away from the house and across the lawn, still holding the rifle at the ready, time became disjointed. Mulder stopped sensing danger. He began to feel alive and part of every living thing. He still heard Dana screaming at him to come back. The grass felt damp under his bare feet, and the moist air cool on his chest and back. Will's and Dana's voices faded as the light grew brighter. Mulder lowered the rifle. He felt buoyed along, under his own power but not quite of his own free will.

 

Mulder reached the end of the driveway and saw a figure in the shadows. A Colored man leaned against a fencepost with his hat in his hand. Behind the man, in the field, a white spotlight shown down from about ten feet high, shining from nothing and illuminating nothing but a patch of wet grass.

 

"I thought it might be you," Mulder said as he reached the crossroads.

 

"If it weren't me, your pistol and rifle don't do you no good." Josh Exley put his hat back on. A broad grin appeared on his dark face. He held out a small cylindrical object. Exley showed Mulder how a needle-like blade shot out and retracted at the touch of a button. His slow drawl fell by the wayside as he instructed, “If need be: base of the neck, Mr. Mulder. Don't trust the face. He can be anyone."

 

Mulder took the little weapon curiously. "You want me to defend my family against the universe with an automatic ice pick?"

 

"The universe isn't out to get you, Mr. Mulder. Humans are just advanced primates on a mundane planet - but you are self-aware, and that makes you special." Exley put his hands in his trouser pockets, slouching casually. "The universe is full of magical things. Those eyes watch you, hoping your kind doesn't annihilate each other, and wait for your minds to grow. In the remote corner of the universe glittering with innumerable solar systems, there is an average star near which you clever animals have invented knowledge."

 

"That's Nietzsche,” Mulder responded. “And an odd thing for a Colored baseball player to know."

 

Exley shrugged.

 

"Tell me Nietzsche isn't an alien, too."

 

"I never met the fellow. I read a book. They let Colored folks read books now."

 

"Mr. Exley, I reiterate: you are not, and never have been, 'folks.'"

 

The man tilted his head back and forth noncommittally.

 

"What am I, Mr. Exley? What are you? Why did you come here tonight?" Mulder looked down at the weapon in his hand and asked, "To give me this? To tell me something?"

 

"To tell you goodbye, I suppose. Your world is changing, and it's time for me to be moving on." Exley hesitated a moment. "You are a remarkable species."

 

Part of Mulder's mind registered reality: he talked to an alien creature. He understood how surreal that was. The other part - the part that viscerally knew things - knew this was his friend, and his friend was lonely. Mulder knew what it was like to be different, and long to blend in with everyone else. All Mulder or Josh Exley had ever wanted was just to be a man.

 

As soon as he thought it, Mulder knew Exley knew he had thought it.

 

"It's a remarkable universe, Mr. Mulder," Exley offered.

 

Mulder shook his head. "I can't go with you. My universe is right here, right now."

 

"Another time," Exley offered.

 

"Another time," Mulder agreed.

 

Exley nodded. "They'll come for you, too. You or your children or your children's children. Someday," he promised, and Mulder saw images in his mind: the sky erupting with fire and the ocean red with blood. Flying saucers and faceless men like a science fiction movie. It was real, though. It was the D-Day invasion, but all of Earth being invaded. Colonized. All the years of sleeping with the enemy while scheming in the shadows and trying to create a human-hybrid to resist the coming plague... In an instant, their clumsy resistance movement failed and man became the hunted rather than the hunter. "You have something they dislike - an immunity - and someday my enemies will be your enemies."

 

"It sounds like I should stay close to home and see what I can do about saving the world. Starting with my little corner of it."

 

Exley nodded again. He put his foot on the lower rail of the split-rail fence. He stepped over it and down into the empty pasture.

 

"Goodbye," Mulder said, unable to think of anything else. "I hope to see you again, someday."

 

Mulder offered his hand over the fence. Exley shook it and turned away silently.

 

As Exley walked toward the circle of light in the grass, Mulder asked, "Were you ever with a Colored woman named 'Rosa?' Years ago? When you were a blues singer? Do you remember Rosa?"

 

Exley turned, looked back, and paused. "A gentleman don't tell 'bout those things, Mr. Mulder."

 

"Well, she remembered you," Mulder assured him.

 

Exley smiled the same way Dana did. He stepped backward and into the light.

 

"You playing tomorrow, Mr. Mulder?" he asked casually.

 

"Sunday. I'm getting married tomorrow. If you can stay, there should be good food. Music. Wedding cake," Mulder said. "Dana says I can't have a dunking booth or a tilt-a-whirl. They rent them, but her mind is made up."

 

"Those human women be headstrong," Exley drawled. He shook his head sympathetically. "but they do make it all worthwhile. Best things in the universe. Love, music, and baseball: make it all be worthwhile."

 

"That they do," Mulder agreed.

 

In the blink of an eye, the light brightened and vanished, taking Exley with it.

 

A second later, Mulder sensed a large craft in the sky above him. He looked up. Something blocked out the stars - and then didn’t. It was gone, leaving a cool breeze rustling Mulder's hair.

 

The oddly calm sensation vanished as well. As if he'd just awakened, Mulder blinked and took a deep breath, clearing his head. He looked around. His rifle and pistol lay at the end of the driveway, across the road. Both weapons had their safety engaged, yet he had no memory of laying them down.

 

Mulder tucked the pistol into his waistband, picked up the rifle, and walked back to the house. He shivered, and his skin was wet from the fog. This time, the gravel on the long driveway hurt his feet, and Mulder wished he'd thought to put a shirt and shoes on.

 

"It's okay, son," Mulder called as he approached the wide porch. His teeth started to chatter. "Will?"

 

He heard no answer. His heart beat faster.

 

"Dana? Honey?"

 

The windows were dark and the front door ajar. No one stood on the front porch. Inside the house, the living room looked exactly as when Mulder went to bed. Will's jacket and car keys lay on the end table, and Maddie's purse was beneath it. A laundry basket held clean, folded diapers at the bottom of the stairs, and Dana's empty teacup sat beside the downstairs telephone.

 

The clock on the wall said midnight, but Mulder sensed it was early morning, the last of pure night before the darkness broke. His trousers were damp from the mist. His fingertips felt numb, like he’d been outside for some time.

 

Perhaps he'd been sleepwalking. Except Mulder didn't sleepwalk.

 

Perhaps he had another odd, self-serving dream.

 

Mulder looked around, trying to figure out what happened and where everyone was. The clock on the wall had stopped ticking.

 

He thought for one horrible moment They - the omnipresent 'Them' in the shadows - had taken his family.

 

"Dad?" Will's voice said, sounding surprised.

 

Mulder looked up. Will descended the steps wearing jeans and a white shirt but carrying his shoes. Maddie followed, looking mussed, but dressed in the same skirt and sweater she had on at dinner.

 

"I'm taking Maddie home." Will looked awkward. "I thought you and Dana were asleep. We were listening to the radio, and I suppose we fell asleep, too."

 

Mulder looked at him stupidly. "Do you know time it is, William?"

 

"For the love of God, we're getting married in a week, Father," his son protested. He looked Mulder up and down. "Pot, kettle, black," Will muttered under his breath. "Is the bloody raccoon in the dustbin again?"

 

Mulder followed Will's gaze and saw he still held his rifle and, in his other hand, Exley's steel stiletto weapon.

 

"Gnomes." Mulder surreptitiously slipped the stiletto device into the pocket of his trousers. "I heard something outside, and I thought it might be Henry Hudson's Catskill gnomes."

 

"I don't think it's gnome season for another decade or so." His son rolled his eyes and took the rifle from Mulder. "I'm taking Maddie home. Go upstairs and stay where Dana can see you. Do not shoot the caterer or the milkman."

 

The button on the side of Maddie's skirt was undone; the waistband must be too tight to fasten. If Mulder looked closely, her little belly showed. Probably, if she was undressed, Will had been able to tell for weeks.

 

Mulder put his hand on Will's shoulder. "Be careful, son."

 

Seeming taken aback, Will nodded. "I will. I'll be back straight away."

 

Maddie gave Mulder a quick kiss on each cheek, picked up her purse, and followed Will outside. A second later, the Chrysler's engine turned over. The radio came on, playing “Rock around the Clock” in the otherwise still, cool night.

 

Emily slept in her bedroom, still holding her stuffed kitten and nestled safely beneath a pink blanket. In Mulder's bedroom, Dana slept as well. The bathrobe she'd worn earlier was at the foot of their bed, and her bare shoulder glowed creamy white in the darkness. Her pajamas remained on the rug beside the bed, where he dropped them earlier.

 

The old fan was turned off.

 

Mulder set the pistol and the stiletto weapon atop the tall wardrobe, and gave them a push so they slid back beyond his reach. Will would have to get a step-stool to reach them, and Dana couldn't see them at all.

 

In the crib, Ben lay awake, silently looking around the room. The wooden buffalo on the mobile hung above his face: stationary, but winding itself up until the string began to twist and knot.

 

Mulder put his hand on the baby's belly. Ben wasn't hungry or cold or wet, but Mulder felt the tension and tiredness. "We don't fool you; you've been awake the whole time, haven't you?"

 

Ben raised one foot and splayed his toes.

 

"It's okay, buddy. Everything's under control. Sleep," Mulder urged.

 

Ben's eyes closed and, after a moment, the buffalo started to turn in the opposite direction, the string unwinding lazily.

 

The alarm clock had stopped as well, but on the nightstand, Bill Mulder's wristwatch continued to tick, reporting five AM neared.

 

The wedding was at ten but Dana said the caterers would arrive at six to start setting up.

 

Mulder took off his trousers. He slid under the blankets and curled up behind Dana. She shifted as he put his arm over her, intertwined her fingers with his, and mumbled sleepily, "You're freezing cold. Where have you been?"

 

"I went outside."

 

"Everything okay?"

 

"Yes." He kissed her shoulder and a path down her arm, his warm lips against her cool skin.

 

Outside the window, wisps of fog rose, mingling and lingering like old, ethereal souls. High above, the stars watched them silently, waiting patiently. Near the full moon, Venus twinkled brightly.

 

Mulder raised his head and looked at the radio. It switched on. Only static came from the little speaker; the station was off the air for the night. In a few seconds though, Robert Johnson's slide guitar began to play the blues. The music howled softly along with the spring breeze.

 

Mulder smiled. He hadn't changed the station.

 

He returned his attention to Dana, nuzzling her neck as he told her, "You know, we have an hour or so."

 

She turned her head, looking up at him, bemused. "Tall, dark, handsome, brilliant, and fertile doesn't get far with me, mister."

 

"What about obsessive, quirky, spooky, and slightly banged up? Bent on saving the world, though. Particularly my little corner of it."

 

Dana rolled toward him, letting him love her. "That could grow on me."

 

*~*~*~*

 

For immediate release:

New York, New York (October 8, 1956) New York Yankees legend Fox Mulder had something to celebrate besides the Yankees’ victory over the Brooklyn Dodgers in game five of the World Series. Watching from the stands as Mulder hit his trademark homeruns and Larson pitched the only perfect game in World Series history was Mulder's lovely wife, Dana, their young daughter, and to fans' and reporters' surprise, the couple's infant son. Once called 'New York's Most Eligible Bachelor,' Fox Mulder was off the market after meeting Dana Scully, formerly a nurse, after a batting injury. Mulder, known for being tight-lipped about his family, said he'd married his long-time fiancée in a private ceremony at his home earlier this year. The marriage comes as no surprise to fans who saw the lovebirds ice skating in Central Park and dancing the night away on New Year's Eve. Mr. and Mrs. Mulder seemed equally delighted with their new son as they showed the baby off to teammates after the game. Their daughter, wearing her father's uniform cap, took her turn holding her infant brother for Don Larson's wife to admire. Mulder's older son, with New York socialite Phoebe Green Mulder, is stationed at Evreux-Fauville Air Base in France; he and his wife expect their first child next month. This will be Mulder's thirteenth and final season with the Yankees, likely cinching a tenth World Series victory by the end of the week. Mulder, who has history of knee injuries and sustained life-threatening chest and shoulder wounds in a mysterious attempt on his life two years ago, yielded to fans pleas for one more season in the sun. He got a base-hit 51 games in a row, approaching his famous 56-game record in 1941, but was derailed by a shoulder injury. Upon return from the injured list, Mulder continued his homerun streak. With 59 homeruns this season and at least two World Series games to play, he stands to break The Babe's 1927 record of 60 homeruns. Asked if he would miss the game, Mulder responded, "Of course. Baseball, music, and love: they wash away the everyday dust of life and make it all worthwhile." He looks forward to spending time with his family. 

 

*~*~*~*

 

End: A Moment in the Sun, part VII

 

A Moment in the Sun: West

 

*~*~*~*

 

In Melvin Frohike’s experience, there were two kinds of professional athletes: those who caused him some trouble and those who caused him lots of trouble. In thirty-odd years as an agent - a glorified term for 'nanny' - Frohike learned few of the latter lasted. They burned out within a few seasons, and sometimes within a few months. Most Major League rookies were barely out of their teens, and some barely out of high school. The meteoric rise to sports stardom, with all its trappings, magnified any character flaw. Women, booze, drugs, parties, gambling, cars, houses: it was like inheriting a million dollars and being granted demigod status. Frohike could caution and chaperone all he wanted; those men were too young, or dim, or too arrogant. He’d never been a professional athlete, but he’d watched enough amazing ball players destroy themselves to know the pattern.

 

There remained the majority: baseball players who caused him some trouble but were worth the effort. His roster of amateur league big fish who made it to the pros and discovered an entire pond of big fish. And piranhas. An AP reporter likened Frohike’s young players to prize thoroughbreds. They had the heart and talent, but the athlete must learn what to do with them, both on the field and off.

 

Fox Mulder fell into neither category. At twenty-three, Mulder had been old for a rookie, and passed through the minor leagues like a spring breeze. Being married and being a father – and taking both responsibilities seriously – set him apart. So did being bright. Really bright. And well-educated. Oxford-University-in-England well-educated. Mulder was conservative in an eccentric, old-moneyed way. During his playing years, aside from being camera shy and having a bad case of tunnel vision regarding his ex-wife, the only trouble Mulder presented was calling Frohike at all hours, lonely and wanting someone to talk to.

 

When the Yankees signed Mulder in the spring of 1939, Frohike watched him practice and saw the makings of an icon. Mulder was six feet, one inch of sun-bronzed skin, lean muscle, sleepy hazel eyes, a lazy, lopsided smile, and hair never quite in place. Besides being painfully polite, he tended to mumble and stutter, which reporters found charming. After Mulder’s first homerun in Detroit, in a post-game interview, he mentioned missing his wife and baby boy, his voice raw with emotion. On the other side of the radio, women and a few men sighed in ecstasy, loving a hero with his heart on his sleeve. Shutters clicked, flashbulbs exploded, pencils scratched, and once Americans saw Mulder on the sports page the next morning, they ate him up with a spoon.

 

From a distance, Fox Mulder was the man every boy wanted to grow up to be. Not just the fortune and fame, but the elegance he brought to the game. Mulder fielded as though he knew where the ball would go and made so few errors they made headlines. He made homeruns look classy and effortless, like Gene Kelly dancing with a bat instead of an umbrella.

 

But up close - and Mulder didn't like to let people get up close - Mulder was the most brilliant, noble, good-hearted man Frohike ever met. Mulder loved his son, his country, and the game of baseball, in that order, with science fiction movies, old blues records, off-beat legends, beautiful women, strawberry milkshakes, and a good bottle of Scotch bringing up the rear. Frohike tended to think of his clients as sons, but Fox Mulder was one of a handful he thought of as a true friend. 

 

For twelve seasons, nine World Series victories, 6,821 at bats, and a world war, Mulder's son and ex-wife constituted far more trouble than Mulder. Until Mulder fell hard for a pretty redheaded nurse with a secret certain government agencies would kill for.

 

Turned out, Frohike's true friend was a psychic, telekinetic, government-bred killing machine. Mulder had some nerve calling Frohike 'freaky.'

 

Frohike put his foot down hard on the accelerator, squealing the truck's tires and running the red light. Emily curled up in her pajamas on the bench seat beside him. Dana sat on the passenger side with two Macy's shopping bags containing $200,000 in cash at her feet. Dana twisted, looking through the rear window at Mulder, Byers, and Will in the parking garage. The men still stared at Alex Krycek's dead body. Will and Mulder both held pistols, and Mulder had pulled the trigger four times and killed four men with pinpoint accuracy. Mulder seemed frighteningly nonplussed - just curious, the way a hunter would be to see what he'd killed. John Byers jabbered frantically, but he'd pull through.

 

Frohike’s mind still reeled, but Frohike thanked God Fox Mulder - whatever the hell he was - was on their side.

 

"Where are we going?" Emily asked in a small, frightened voice. Her sock feet dangled far above the floorboards. Mulder had taken them to Coney Island the previous day, and her nose and cheeks remained pink from the sun.

 

"I don't know, honey," Dana answered numbly. She watched until Frohike's building faded from sight, and turned, putting a hand on her flat abdomen. Her full skirt, bolstered by layers of white crinoline, spread across the seat in a sea of dark blue silk. An antique engagement ring glittered on her finger, still twisted out of place.

 

Frohike heard Mulder tell her the baby she carried was fine. A little boy. How Mulder knew, Frohike couldn't fathom, but he'd bet a great deal of money Mulder was right. That bundle of cells inside her was a miracle, a brave new world and, if the government found her - a death sentence.

 

"Are you all right?" Frohike kept one eye on her and one eye on the road as he weaved through mid-morning Manhattan traffic. "Are you going to be sick again?"

 

"No. No, I don't think so."

 

"Let me know if you need to stop," he promised.

 

Mulder was correct, as he generally was. What the government tried to train soldiers be, Mulder was born to be with some superpowers and a genius IQ tacked on free of charge. Add a suitable female, Mulder’s historic inability to use a prophylactic, and suddenly the entire universe was out to get them.

 

Jesus, Frohike felt out of his league. He managed baseball players and dabbled in conspiracies and small engine repair in his spare time.

 

"Where are we going, Mr. Frohike?" Dana asked. Her voice sounded as small as her daughter's.

 

"We're going someplace safe," he assured her.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Fox Mulder liked liquor as much as the next fellow, but Frohike spent the summer and autumn of 1953 watching Mulder sink to the bottom of a bottle of expensive Scotch and refuse to come up for air. When Mulder fell off the wagon, he landed on a leggy, busty, gorgeous brunette. A series of them.

 

After a season plagued by injuries, Mulder retired from professional baseball, and people started referring to him in the past tense. “You were Fox Mulder.” At first, Mulder answered, “I still am Fox Mulder.” After a while though, if a pretty girl recognized him, he'd order a drink for her, another drink for himself, and say, “Yes, sweetheart, I was.”

 

Frohike’s press release said, of course, Mulder wanted to spend time with his family - except his father died, his sister had been missing for decades, and Mulder wasn't close to his mother. He still let Phoebe bait him - which she considered a recreational activity - but Mulder had gotten it through his skull he and his ex-wife wouldn’t patch things up. There was William, the much-loved Wonder Boy whom Mulder couldn't comprehend was neither nine nor twenty-nine.

 

For such a brilliant man, Fox Mulder could be awfully thick-headed.

 

William idolized his father, but at fourteen had trouble reconciling the golden public image, Phoebe's condemnation, and reality. The night before Halloween, Will walked in on Mulder and a woman at an inopportune time. It took weeks for Will to tell Frohike about it, and Mulder never did. Mulder quietly sobered up and tried to make amends. But Will, hurt and confused and worried his mother had been right about his father, wasn't cooperating with the making of amends.

 

"Dad's seeing someone. He told me this afternoon," Will had informed Frohike tersely, calling Frohike's home telephone line at ten forty-five on a school night. Frohike told William to call anytime, and so Will did. Anytime. If Frohike’s phone rang after ten p.m., either a player called from jail, or William or Fox Mulder were halfway through a conversation and expected Frohike to catch up. "Did you know?"

 

"I did know. Dana Scully." Frohike got up and changed the channel on his television set to match what Will watched, but turned down the volume. He heard the detective show’s dialogue fine over the telephone line.

 

"How long has he been fucking her?"

 

"Watch your mouth, William."

 

"Stuffing her. Banging, bedding, shagging, screwing... How long?"

 

"He's been seeing her for a few months, I think."

 

"Is it the same woman?" Will asked, trying to sound sophisticated and disinterested.

 

"No," Frohike answered, knowing which woman Will meant. "Mulder met Dana Scully at Mercy Hospital that night. She's a nurse. She sounds like a nice lady."

 

"That's what Dad said. Why didn't he tell me earlier?"

 

"Probably because he didn’t want you involved if it didn’t work out."

 

Will made a neutral “hum” sound, which meant he'd gotten the same answer from Mulder.

 

"Do you think your father hasn't dated since your parents' divorce?" Frohike asked. "He's not a monk."

 

"No, he does, sometimes. I've seen photographs in the paper."

 

"Most of it is press, Will. It's a set-up, and I have to twist his arm to get him to do it. The real dates, with real women, has he ever-"

 

"Could you arrange one of those press dates between me and Mr. Byers' secretary?"

 

Frohike chuckled. "She's married, Will, and about twenty years older than you. Stop showing up at Byers' office for no reason; your father gets a bill and Byers gets a nervous twitch."

 

"Christmas is coming, and my birthday," Will said hopefully. "I've been good this year, Santa. Now I'm keen to be naughty."

 

"The line forms behind the furry press elf. Seriously, Will, about Dana Scully: has your father ever mentioned a woman to you before?"

 

"No," Will answered thoughtfully. "No, he never has."

 

"He's never mentioned one to me before, either. What do you think that means?"

 

Several moments of loud television dialog passed before Will said, "I think it means, in the near future, I'm going to have a stepmother."

 

That was Frohike's appraisal of the situation, as well. Frohike bumped into Mulder at the bank this morning. Mulder said he needed something from his safe deposit box. Something small enough to fit in a coat pocket, and something he hadn't shown to Frohike.

 

"Do you think-" the boy started hesitantly, "-if Dad marries her, the judge might let me live with him? See Mother on weekends?"

 

Frohike hadn’t anticipated that question, but he answered honestly. "I don't know. Fathers rarely get custody of their children."

 

"I'm not a child anymore, and I'd have a stepmother. You said Dana Scully is a nice lady. One of my mates lives with his father and stepmother."

 

"Where's his real mother?"

 

"Shagging the gardener in Nantucket."

 

Frohike considered for a few seconds. Rather than answering, he asked, "How bad is it with your mother, Will?"

 

"Since she found out about this woman? It's beastly. The pissing and the sport, she couldn't care less about." Will imitated his mother's harsh Cockney accent: "Stop pestering me; go to The Plaza and tell your smart Yankee father to sober up and help you with your maths, William," and exhaled loudly. "But a nice girl? I think she's come unhinged, Frohike," the boy said. "It's all the time. Awful things. How he ruined her life. How I'm just like him. Mother's out, or I'd be hearing about my father the lying, cheating rapist and Dana Scully the bloody whore."

 

Jesus Christ, Frohike thought, if Mulder knew the things Phoebe said to their son, Mulder would be in jail for murder.

 

"My father didn't ruin her life; Mother can ruin her life fine on her own," Will continued angrily, seeming glad to tell someone. "For a man she says takes advantage of girls, Mother used to be keen to drop by Dad's old apartment. That's bullocks. Dad doesn't need to force any woman. He could walk up to any pretty girl in the city - including Mother - say 'I'm Fox Mulder; take off your knickers,' and she'd do it."

 

Sidestepping numerous booby-traps, Frohike answered, "I think he's fallen for the one pretty girl who won't, Will."

 

"Really?"

 

Frohike shook his head. "He says she's not a baseball fan."

 

"Really?" the boy repeated, sounding intrigued. "I know she'll steal biscuits from the dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, she can't ski or skate, and she has ginger hair. Tell me what you know."

 

Frohike filed those random bits of information away for later examination. "When your father first asked her out, she thought he was a mobster and told him to go to Hell. Mulder showed her his World Series ring to prove he wasn't a mobster, and she called him an out-of-work, divorced, ex-ballplayer."

 

"Perhaps I might like her, after all," Will decided. 

 

"Perhaps you should go to bed since you have school in the morning," Frohike tried.

 

Instead of saying goodnight, Will inhaled a slow breath, let it out, and asked casually, "How far along was Mother when they married?"

 

"I wasn't there," Frohike dodged expertly. Phoebe must have told William, because Mulder never, ever would have. Mulder never told Frohike, specifically, but Frohike knew the marriage date on Mulder's divorce decree, knew Will's birth date, and could count. "Why do you ask?"

 

He dealt with awkward situations and finessed deals for a living, but he longed for a warning system to predict Will's next question. Sometimes he gave thanks he'd never become a father.

 

Most times, he didn't, though.

 

"Don't make me find a calendar and count the months, Frohike."

 

Frohike should have told Will to ask Mulder, but he knew the boy wouldn't. Plus, William had heard Phoebe's fictionalized version of the events.

 

"Frohike?"

 

"A few months gone, I think. They knew each other while he was in school, and he liked her, but I don't think they'd been dating long. From what he's said over the years, you were a surprise, but he wanted you. They got married, moved to New York, and it was rough for a while. There was a depression; money was tight. Your father worked a lot, trying to pay the bills. Your mother was alone, trying to take care of you in a city she didn't know. Right as he started playing ball, they got evicted, and your mother and you went to stay with your grandmother in London."

 

"How old was I?"

 

"A small baby. I'd just met Mulder. I didn't meet you until after the war."

 

There was a long pause as the television detective show blared in the background. "Dad was in London with us when I was small. Christmas, before the war. We're together - Mother and Dad and me. Grandmother Green has photographs. They look happy."

 

"He spent the off-season there. Remember, it was 1939. He couldn't visit for a weekend. It took a week to sail to England even on the Queen Mary, and his contract said he had to play baseball. Pan Am had started transatlantic flights, but not those nice twelve-hour New York to London flights you're used to. The war was coming, and Mulder wanted you and your mother out of Britain from the moment your ship docked in Southampton, but he was on the road for weeks on end, and she needed help caring for you," Frohike said diplomatically. "Leaving you and your mother with your grandmother seemed the lesser of two evils. The night the Yankees were out of the 1940 World Series, Mulder was on a plane. I couldn't even get him to do interviews."

 

Frohike paused, considering before he spoke.

 

"I know Mulder planned to bring you and your mother back to the States, come hell or high water. Your grandmother, your nanny - anyone who wanted to leave England, but especially you and Phoebe. Mulder came back alone; I don't know why. He got tight-lipped about his family after that."

 

"Mother said he hit her."

 

"I wasn't there," Frohike reminded him. "Something happened that winter, though. Honestly, Will, if your mother tried to keep you from him, he may have hurt her."

 

Will was quiet for a while, but asked, "Was there someone else?"

 

"For your father?" Frohike answered. "No. Not that I know of, and I kept close tabs on him. I tell your father he's the most boring professional baseball player I've ever met, and I've met thousands. Was there someone else for your mother? I can't answer."

 

"A man came to pick Mother up one day. A tall man with a mustache and a fancy silver car," Will said, sounding like he struggled to remember. "He was an old friend, Mother said. I must have been four or five. I asked if he was my father, and I remember Mother saying he should have been."

 

In jail for murder, Frohike repeated to himself silently.

 

"After a while, the man didn't come 'round, and I remember Mother crying. I think he died." Another long silence. "Mother, Dad - they'd be happier if they never met."

 

"They wouldn't have you, Will."

 

"I know, but... Mother hates Dad, and I think he hates her."

 

"I don't think he hates her." Frohike tried to think of a way to explain it so the boy would understand. "Sometimes there's one person in a whole lifetime. You might be seventeen or you might be seventy, but if you find that person, it's your shot at truly loving someone. It's never the same with anyone else. With other people, love's like that new cheese: Velveeta passes for cheese if you've never had the real thing. When your parents married and had you, they were young and they had no idea what love could to be like. They tried to do the right thing, but everything was against them and their best wasn't good enough. Does your father truly love her? No, but he doesn't hate her, either. They both love you, and I think they both get crazy when it comes to you."

 

Frohike could swear the last part was the truth. He felt he should get some Hollywood award for his performance. Frohike hadn't technically lied to Will, and he hadn't said 'mean-spirited, selfish, money-grubbing whore' once.

 

"Did you find her?" Will asked. "That one girl?"

 

Caught off guard, Frohike answered, "A long time ago."

 

"You don't talk about being married or having children. What happened?"

 

Frohike fiddled with a thread on his undershirt. "You know how your father won't talk about the war? I don't want to talk about her. She died, Will. There was a flu pandemic, and millions of people died. She was one of them."

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

"If it gets too bad at your mother's, you know you can come over here or to my office for a while. Or, your father's happy to see you at The Plaza. You don't have to have a reason, and I don't think you're going to walk in on anything ever again."

 

The boy didn't say anything, but he probably nodded.

 

"Dana Scully has a child. A little girl," William said next. "Dad wants me to meet them Saturday at noon in Central Park. He's picking them up, taking them ice-skating and to a movie. I'm to meet them at Wollman Rink. I'm to be nice, or my father will speak to me in a stern tone of voice. And they're coming to Aspen for Christmas."

 

Will paused to sip something. Tea, probably. He'd be lounging in his undershirt and jeans, watching television, listening to the radio, and have something to read close by. Usually a magazine or comic book; despite Mulder's efforts, Will didn't read well. Liking the barrage of noise and information had to be genetic though, because Mulder did the same thing; Mulder's books were thicker and not exclusively in English. The two looked alike, moved alike. They sounded alike, except for Will's American slang and variable British accent. Having both in the same room was eerie.

 

"I'm not going," Will announced. His sofa squeaked as he shifted.

 

"I think you should. At least meet her. She sounds nice."

 

"I don't care how nice she sounds," he answered airily. "She's like the other, and I'm not going."

 

"I beg to differ, but suit yourself."

 

Frohike heard newspaper rustle. Will must be looking at the photo of Mulder and Dana on the Sunday society page. Mulder wanted to tell Will about Dana Scully before the photo was published, but Frohike wasn't certain he had.

 

"She doesn't look like the other," Will commented. "She's short. He says she has red hair. Just what I need: a sneaky, redheaded stepmother." The paper rustled again. "I'll tell him I overslept."

 

"Do you want me to go with you? I wouldn't mind getting a look at her."

 

"Well, if you want,” the boy conceded. “If I even go. I'll be at Daddy-O's."

 

"Well, if I have time, I'll be in front of The Plaza at a quarter till twelve on Saturday."

 

He heard wheels turn as Will thought it over. "I'm not saying I'm going to meet her."

 

"I'm not saying I'm going with you," Frohike answered sarcastically. "Just - if I have time."

 

"I'm not ice-skating," Will stipulated. "If I don't like this woman, I'm giving you the signal and we're leaving. And I'm not putting up with her bratty little kid; I don't care what my father says."

 

"Goodnight, William. Go to bed."

 

Will mumbled goodnight and hung up. Frohike replaced the receiver, got a beer from the icebox, returned to his sofa, and waited. Within ten minutes, the telephone rang again.

 

"I asked Will to meet Dana and Emily Scully on Saturday," Mulder announced. The same detective program blared on the television set in the background. "Will said he would."

 

Frohike sipped his beer. He pushed a broken short-wave radio and a pizza pie box aside, and propped his feet on his coffee table. "He did?" he answered, sounding surprised.

 

*~*~*~*

 

"Can you go by yourself?" Frohike asked Emily outside the filling station's ladies' room, ardently hoping she could.

 

Emily nodded, so Frohike set her down and waited. At the pumps, the station attendants finished filling the truck's gas tank, cleaned the windshield, and raised the hood to check the oil. The hood slammed closed, and Dana woke. She opened the door and got out slowly. She pushed her hair back from her face as she looked around.

 

"Bathroom break," he said, going to her.

 

"Where are we?"

 

"Near the Pennsylvania border. Emily needed to stop again."

 

He motioned for Dana to sit down on an old bench. Frohike sat beside her. He leaned forward and looked each way down the long stretch of asphalt. He saw the filling station, and a greasy little diner across the street, but otherwise nothing but road for miles.

 

"This doesn't feel real," Dana said, shaking her head. "This whole day: it doesn't seem real. I keep waiting to wake up."

 

"I don't think we were followed. I think we're safe. I'll stop soon and let you and Emily rest a few hours. I have a place in mind."

 

"Then what, Mr. Frohike?"

 

"Then you disappear. Change your appearance; change your name. I'd like to get you out of the country, but I doubt you could get across the border."

 

"So that's it? Emily and I vanish? What about Mulder? He shot those men because of me. There are people after us. He has to-"

 

"Don't worry about it," he assured her. "We'll take care of it." He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with warm, clean air. "Yes, you and Emily vanish until we're certain it's safe. That's what Mulder wants: for you to be safe. I'll give you a phone number, a person who can relay messages, but-" 

 

"I can't take all this money and abandon him. Mulder doesn't know how dangerous-"

 

"Yes, he does."

 

Dana looked up as if searching for a pattern in the clouds. "I did this. To him. To Will. To everyone. I was so selfish."

 

"You didn't do anything," he answered, though he doubted she believed him.

 

A delivery truck rattled down the road, bound for the horizon.

 

She started to speak, but the bathroom door opened. Frohike got up to get Emily. He picked her up the way Mulder did, trying not to put pressure on her joints. She'd washed her hands; he smelled the pink powdery soap from the bathroom as she held on to his neck.

 

The filling station had an old soda machine. Frohike dropped nickels in the slot and opened the door one-handed. He gave Emily three cold glass bottles to hold.

 

He returned to the truck and told Dana, "We bought sodas," as if she hadn't watched them do it. "Do you want one?"

 

"Not yet," she answered, which was what she'd said when he offered lunch.  He'd bought Emily a burger and strawberry shake. Dana asked for a lemonade and sipped it for hours.

 

"You need to eat something," he reminded her. “You have a passenger.”

 

Dana took a bottle grudgingly. "Do you want me to drive?"

 

"It's manual." Frohike hadn’t known she could drive; Mulder chauffeured her everywhere. Also, Frohike liked his new truck with all the gears intact. "A three-speed. Can you manage it?"

 

She nodded and reached for the keys. The woman outwitted some government alien-hybrid breeding program, and kept Fox Mulder more or less in line. Dana Scully could roast a turkey, balance a checkbook, and he once watched her wrestle a man back from Death. Odds were, she could drive a truck.  

 

He put Emily in the middle of the bench seat, and he got in the passenger side as Dana slid behind the wheel. She looked for a gearshift.

 

"It's on the column," he said.

 

Dana surveyed the set up. She turned the key, put the Ford in gear, and eased to the edge of the parking lot. "Which way are we going?"

 

"West," he answered.

 

She turned right, shifted into second, and headed for the sunset.

 

*~*~*~*

 

The first time Frohike laid eyes on Dana Scully, she wobbled across the ice in Central Park clutching Mulder's hand and laughing. Her eyes sparkled, her breath hung white in the icy air, and her cheeks reddened further as Mulder kissed her. Shutters clicked, and one of the most famous images of the era was born: Mr. Baseball embracing his beautiful girlfriend as they glided across Wollman Rink. All seemed right with the world.

 

The second time, almost a year later, Dana walked beside Mulder's hospital gurney as Mulder left surgery. She wore a bloodstained satin dress and stiletto heels from the night before, and kept one hand on Mulder’s forearm. His pale face was shadowed with stubble, hers with exhaustion and fear, but her eyes looked determined. Mulder tried his best to die - and the doctors said to let him go - but no one died on Dana Scully's watch without her permission.

 

Frohike saw her in the best of times and the worst of times, and had the same opinion in both instances: she was one hell of a woman.

 

The ringing phone had woken Frohike. He picked up the receiver to hear Will jabbering his father had been shot.  

 

Frohike sat up in bed. "Shot?" he repeated in the darkness, still half-awake.

 

Frohike had talked with Mulder that afternoon, and gotten the report on Emily's convalescence and Dana's mid-term grades. As soon as Dana finished class, Mulder said they would go out to dinner to celebrate. Also, unless Frohike was mistaken, Will should be with his mother in New York.

 

"I was being horrid,” William managed between sobs. “They wanted his wallet and they were looking at Miss Scully so Dad told us to run and they shot him.”

 

“They shot him?” Frohike echoed again.

 

“The medics said he was dead, but Miss Scully said he wasn't," William said, and Frohike got on a red-eye flight to DC.

 

Frohike arrived at the hospital at four in the morning to a crowd outside waiting for any word. The nurse at the front desk said Mulder was still in surgery. Frohike asked about William, and the nurse directed him past the lobby, through the double doors, and down a long white corridor. Reaching the restricted part of the hospital, he thought he'd taken a wrong turn, but spotted Will slouched on a folding metal chair in the hall outside Surgery. Will held Emily as she slept, and wore a rumpled suit likely belonging to Mulder. William shouldn’t be there, but no one made any attempt to get him to move.

 

"One of the nurses said the surgeons were closing. That means they're finished, doesn't it?" Will asked hoarsely. "It means he's okay, doesn't it?"

 

"It means they're finished," Frohike answered. He leaned against the wall beside Will. "Did she say how he's doing?"

 

Will shook his head.

 

"Where's Dana? Is she all right?"

 

"She's with Dad." 

 

"Do you or Emily need anything?"

 

"We need my dad not to die," the boy said, looking lost.

 

Frohike put his hand on Will's shoulder and stopped asking questions.

 

A gray metal clock on the wall opposite them ticked intrusively loudly in the silent hospital. As the minutes passed into an hour, he left to call Byers again and buy two cups of coffee no one drank. About five, Emily needed to go to the bathroom. Frohike sat on the folding metal chair until Will returned with her.

 

Eventually, the swinging doors parted. The gurney emerged in slow motion, with Dana beside it and the exhausted doctors following. Mulder said she was working as an ER nurse, but Frohike assumed it had been easier to let her into surgery than argue with her. She pulled the cloth cap off her hair and took off her surgical gown as she walked, handing them to another nurse. The evening gown underneath was rust in front and dark blue in back. Frohike realized the original color was blue, and the rust color on the bodice and full skirt was Mulder's blood. Dana stopped to slip off her high heels and continued walking in her stockings. Her feet left a trail of warm prints on the cold floor.

 

Will stood as the gurney approached. The boy shifted Emily to his hip.

 

"Dad?" Will sounded like a small child. He started to touch his father's hand, but pulled back, frightened. "Daddy?"

 

Will must have expected Mulder to open his eyes, blink a few times, and say something sarcastic. Frohike had seen enough players go under the knife to know how they looked afterward: groggy, pale, uncomfortable. Disoriented. Not like this. Mulder looked like a corpse.

 

"There was a great deal of vascular damage, son," one of the surgeons told William. "His brain was deprived of oxygen for an extended period of time. The prognosis isn't good, but we're doing all we can."

 

"Miss Scully? Dana?" William said shakily. He stared at his father's slack, ashen face. Layers of bandages covered Mulder's chest and shoulder, and tubes and IV's ran in and out of everywhere. He breathed shallowly and so slowly Frohike found himself anxious for the next inhalation.

 

"It's bad, Will,” Dana admitted. “Even if his heart keeps beating, they're not sure he'll wake up. It took the ambulance a long time to get there, and Mulder lost a lot of blood and..." She repeated, "It's bad."

 

Frohike put a hand on Will's shoulder again, steadying him.

 

"We're taking him to Recovery. As soon as he's stable, I'll come get you,” Dana promised. “We'll move him to a room and you can sit with him. He'll know you're there. Mulder will know we're safe." She reached up, touching Will’s cheek with her fingertips. A fresh bruise ringed her wrist. "Okay?"

 

Will nodded, likely not sure what to do except agree. Dana kissed Emily's forehead as the girl slept and followed the orderlies.

 

They maneuvered the gurney through the doorway to Recovery. Will sank onto his folding chair again. He held Emily against his shoulder and stared straight ahead.

 

"He's going to die, isn't he?" he whispered, barely adding words to breath.

 

"Not if she can help it," Frohike answered. "Don't bet against him."

 

The boy didn't respond except to close his eyes against the too-bright lights and lean his head back against the painted, cinderblock wall. Frohike heard his own heart beating inside his ears in time with the ticking of the clock. A tear slipped out the corner of Will's eye and trickled down his cheek. Frohike closed his eyes, waiting, letting time swirl past unmonitored until he had to think again.

 

Frohike should talk to the press - update them before they broke down the hospital's front door. He should check with the police. He should call Byers and the ball club and the companies Mulder did ads for. Announcements would need to be made. He should do what Mulder paid him to do.

 

Will sniffed and took a long, shuddery breath.

 

Frohike stayed in the hospital hallway.

 

On the other side of the wall, Frohike heard the nurses moving around, monitoring Mulder. Every few minutes, the doctors asked for a report, and it would be the same series of dismal numbers. Mulder was 'still holding on,' which seemed positive only given the alternative.

 

He heard Dana speaking. She assured Mulder he would be all right and asking him to move his hand and open his eyes if he could hear her. Dana's voice continued. Frohike heard her indistinct words, but nothing indicating Mulder moved.

 

"Doctors," a female voice called. She said Mulder's blood pressure, already too low, was dropping. 

 

Within seconds, Frohike heard rapid footsteps as the surgeons returned. "We must have missed a bleeder," one man said.

 

"We'll have to open him up again. Damn it."

 

There were more footsteps. The sound of air being forced into a blood pressure cuff. Metal instruments rattled on metal trays, and glass clinked as nurses unhooked the bottles of blood and whatever else from the stands, preparing to take Mulder back to surgery. Someone called out a string of numbers corresponding to vital signs, and the doctor cursed again.

 

"He won't make it," the first man responded.

 

Will heard the discussion and opened his eyes. He breathed quickly and held Emily closer.

 

"You have to try," Dana's voice said.

 

"He won't survive, Miss Scully. It's a miracle he's alive now."

 

"You have to try," she repeated urgently.

 

"I've tried! I've been trying for hours!" the surgeon snapped back. "His brain is gone and his chest is hamburger!"

 

"You're not giving up on him!" she ordered tersely, and Frohike envisioned her grab the surgeon by the lapels of his white coat to emphasize her point. "You give up when I give up, and I'm not giving up yet! Do you want your picture on tomorrow's front page as the surgeon who stood by and let Fox Mulder die, because I'll make sure it's there!"

 

Something crashed to the floor, shattering and spattering and echoing into the hall.

 

Frohike tensed, waiting for her to call for him and made good on her threat.

 

"Fine. Take him back," the surgeon's voice conceded wearily. He asked, "How much blood do we have left?"

 

Frohike heard the orderlies moving the gurney. Its wheels clacked across the tile floor.

 

"Three pints," a nurse answered.

 

The gurney came through the door again, turning toward the operating room. Will stood and watched helplessly as the orderlies rushed his father past.

 

"That's not enough," the doctor said.

 

The nurse said they could call another hospital for more, and the doctor responded there wasn't time.

 

"What about Negro blood?" Dana demanded. "Use it," she ordered when there was stunned silence. The blood supply was segregated by race, as White patients were treated in one part of the hospital and Blacks another. "Use whatever the hospital has."

 

"It still might not be enough. We're wasting our time and-" The surgeon caught sight of Will's face. He stopped speaking, swallowed, and turned away, following the gurney to Surgery.

 

Dana stopped in the hall, hands on her hips. She'd changed into a pair of white nurses' shoes and a uniform, both two sizes too big on her. 

 

"You," she said, turning to Will. "Are you O-positive? Your blood type: is it O-positive?"

 

Will nodded, wide-eyed and clutching Emily. He hated needles.

 

"Find a nurse and tell her you want to donate a pint of blood. Or two. Whatever he needs. Go! What about you?" She pointed at Frohike.

 

"O-positive," Frohike confirmed, expecting lightning bolts to fly from her fingertip.

 

"Go with Will. Now!"

 

The doors to Surgery swung open as an orderly hurried out. Frohike got a glimpse the nurses cutting away Mulder’s bandages as the anesthetist covered Mulder's mouth and nose with the black rubber mask. In the adjoining room, the two surgeons hurriedly scrubbed their hands.

 

"Now!" Dana repeated. Frohike and Will hurried into Recovery in search of another nurse before Dana Scully found a syringe and started siphoning them herself.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Some of Frohike’s ballplayers couldn’t remember the don'ts. Don't get sixteen year-old girls pregnant. Don't get drunk and run down little old ladies with your sports car. Don't shoot your mouth off about the ball club, politics, religion, or money, no matter how right you are. Throw the ball, hit the ball, and catch the ball, but don't threaten the umpire with a bat because you thought it was a foul ball. Sometimes phenomenal talent came with a phenomenal lack of judgment or conscience, and then Frohike came in.

 

Frohike knew the best lawyers, doctors, accountants, even a few low-level mobsters. He knew which mayors and judges were baseball fans and might look the other way. Angry fathers could be soothed, police could be appeased, and bail could be posted. In the end though, Frohike needed to get his player in front of the reporters again looking repentant and earnest. Looking patriotic, athletic, devoted to his family - an all-American boy who made a mistake. Have them play sandlot ball with some smiling GI's, or sign autographs for sick children in the hospital. Go to church with their mama. A wedding or a new baby was good. It mattered little what variation of stupid the man had come down with, and much more what the public perception was. Truth paled in comparison to public image.

 

Fox Mulder could have gotten by with murder - a darkly amusing thought to Frohike since it might come down to that. Mulder was the resurrected baseball hero engaged to the pretty nurse who saved his life last year. Throw in a few Army medals, a handsome teenage son, a sick little girl, and a baby on the way. Mulder might as well have been gold-plated.

 

Frohike drove again. Dana stared out the window of the truck at the Pennsylvania countryside. Emily was quiet and watching everything with the serious, overly-mature demeanor chronically sick children had.

 

Frohike glanced sideways at Emily. She wasn't a credential or a press release. This little girl deserved a father, and she didn't deserve to be a government lab rat. Will might be screwing his way through Washington D.C. and the Upper West Side of Manhattan, but no boy deserved to watch his father almost die - twice. None of them deserved this.

 

Scratch the surface of this Life magazine fairytale and a nightmare emerged. A quiet rage boiled inside Frohike as he drove. None of them deserved this.

 

"Those were bad guys," Emily said, as if she read his mind. "The men Mulder shot: they weren't nice. Mulder's nice."

 

"You're right, honey," her mother assured her tiredly.

 

"Now the bad guys are after us. Us and a very little baby."

 

Dana nodded.

 

"I'll have two brothers. A big brother and a little brother."

 

Her mother nodded again.

 

"Two big Bubbys are better than one, Will says, but Mulder says it's better if I say 'Bub'." Emily looked up at Frohike. "Bubbies are ladies' breasts in Germany." She paused. "My mommy's breasts are perfect in any language."

 

Dana blushed and put her hand over her face. "I don't know who is the worst snoop, Em," she told her daughter. "You or Will."

 

"Will - by a long shot," Emily answered, her inflection sounding exactly like Mulder. "That boy should work for Hoover."

 

Frohike chuckled. He slowed the truck and turned onto yet another back road.

 

"I'll keep an eye on your big Bubby, okay?" Frohike offered. "And Mulder. I'll look out for them. It's my job."

 

"Okay," Emily agreed, and resumed watching the horizon.

 

If this story would have a happy ending, Frohike’s contribution to it needed to eat some dinner and get some rest and stay alive. Byers and Mulder and Fate would have to see to the rest.

 

A wedding. A wedding or a new baby made for a happy ending.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Each time Frohike called his office to check in, the list of messages grew. Mulder's shooting led the news on the radio, and would be on the evening television news, as well. Senators, mayors, even the President weighed in, saying Mulder and his family were in their prayers. Phoebe Mulder called, hysterical, according to Frohike’s secretary. Reporters interviewed the restaurant owner, the French waiter, the medics, and even the parking valet. Mulder’s photo was on the front page of every newspaper. Life and Look Magazine both called about running a special memorial edition. An American icon was dying, and the country bled with him.

 

In a hospital bed in a private room, Mulder's chest rose and fell at an unnaturally slow rate. He didn’t move otherwise. Dana sat beside Mulder as if keeping watch. He had no response to pain, light, or sound. A team of world-class doctors advised them Mulder would never wake up.

 

The crowd of fans outside the Georgetown hospital still grew, so Frohike arranged to leave through a back entrance. The police escorted Will and Emily through the hospital kitchen. The cooks crowded around a radio in the corner, listening intently. The women looked up as the policemen entered. The cooks looked at Will, at the radio, and at William again. Then, embarrassed, one woman snapped the radio off.

 

The owner of the Washington Senators baseball team sent his personal car and driver. As Frohike guided two numb children - Will still in his father's suit and Emily in her party dress - into the elegant black car, it felt nothing like going home and everything like heading to a funeral. As they drove away from the hospital, the chauffeur glanced in the rear view mirror at Will. The driver looked concerned but never spoke. Outside the car windows, a bright November day began, which seemed impossible after an endless night. The car picked up speed. William leaned his head back against the leather seat, closed his eyes, and covered his face with his hands.

 

Mulder's big, silent house remained as Mulder and Dana left it the previous evening: frozen in time with Will's backpack and leather coat dropped near the front door, and a few neckties draped over the banister. A little girl's toys lay scattered across the living room rug, and a tube of lipstick and a hairbrush had been forgotten beside the aquarium. William hung up his backpack and coat on the rack, and fed the fish, who gathered to watch him sadly through the glass.

 

It seemed a cruel place to bring Will and Emily, but kinder than a sterile hotel room. William wanted to bathe, change clothes, and return to the hospital. Margaret Scully would come in a few hours to take Emily.

 

Frohike heard water running upstairs and Will moving around. Frohike surveyed the kitchen, looking for something to feed them. Looking for something to do besides return calls and talk to reporters. The icebox was empty but a notepad on the front of it read 'coffee' in Mulder's handwriting, and a list of actual groceries in a feminine script. He'd call the grocer and have something delivered. Frohike took the long to-do list from his pocket and added another item: feed children.

 

On the second floor, Will's bedroom was the same mess as at The Plaza, and the bedroom opposite it contained a canopy bed with a pink blanket and a stuffed kitten resting against the pillows. Both beds were empty. Frohike discovered their usual occupants in the bedroom at the end of the hall. Emily had changed into pink pajamas, and Will wore a white t-shirt. They curled up in two sleeping bags on Mulder's big bed as if camped out and waiting for their parents to come home.

 

Frohike stood in the doorway, watching them. A woman's dress and slip draped a chair beside the dresser. A second robe hung on the back of the bathroom door. Mulder told Frohike the old mansion was "an investment," but the investment was in the woman whose attic apartment was visible from the window of the master bedroom.

 

Frohike felt certain if he could ask Mulder, Mulder would say his investment paid off despite the losses.

 

"I'm sorry he shot your Daddy," Emily told Will in her little voice, from deep inside her sleeping bag. "You hurt Mommy on accident, but he hurt Mulder on purpose," she added unhappily.

 

"I know," Will assured her. "I'm sorry, too."

 

"He's not a nice man. Mulder's nice, but he doesn't know his colors."

 

"By your definition, I don't know my colors either, Squirt."

 

Emily digested for a moment and asked, "What's a bastard?"

 

Frohike wrinkled his brow unhappily. Months ago, he’d arranged a marriage certificate, wedding photographs, and a tombstone at Arlington. If anyone asked, Dana’s husband and Emily’s father died a hero in Korea. No one should be calling that child a bastard.

 

After a pause, Will answered, "It's not a nice word. I shouldn't have said it and you shouldn't either."

 

"Okay," she agreed. "Has Mulder always been your daddy? Even when you were little?"

 

William adjusted his pillow. "I didn't know him when I was little. I remember a man on the telephone but I didn't realize he was my father. I knew he was American and Mother didn't like him. There was a war, and he was away fighting in it." 

 

Emily nodded.

 

"When I was your age, one night my nanny woke me whispering 'William, do you want to hear your father?' except she said it like the men in the French restaurant. 'Guillaume, veux-tu entendre ton pere?' She said it was un secret, and I mustn't tell because Mother would be angry. The military BBC channel was broadcasting an old World Series game for the American GI's - one my father played in. Nanny Marie and I sat in the dark with our ears pressed to the radio. I remember hearing the crowds cheer when he hit a homerun and the announcers talking about him, saying nice things. The game was in Ohio, but the announcer said Fox Mulder had a wife and an infant son in New York. I knew those places were in America, and my last name was 'Mulder' like his. After the game, a reporter interviewed him. The man's voice on the radio was the same as the one on the telephone. That infant son had been me."

 

That was the third or fourth game of the 1939 World Series, and by the time the Yankees beat the Cincinnati Reds, Mulder had broken the record for most homeruns by a rookie. Will had been an infant and in London with Phoebe.

 

"Are you allowed to see Mulder in the hospital?" Emily asked.

 

"I am. I'm going back in a few hours."

 

"I'm not allowed. I'm too little."

 

"You tell the doctors and police I'm your big brother, and I said you are allowed to visit him in hospital."

 

"That's a lie, Will."

 

"It's a little lie." The boy used his father's sometimes flexible moral reasoning. "You're a little girl."

 

"Okay, Bubby." A moment later, she asked, "Is Mulder going to die?"

 

"If anything happens, Frohike will tell us." Will raised his head. "Won't you, Uncle Freaky?"

 

"I am on the job," Frohike assured them. "Any news, good or bad, and you'll know as soon as I do."

 

"Okay," Will said, and laid his head down again.

 

Frohike picked up Dana's clothing and put it out of sight. Her toiletries in Mulder's bathroom got tucked into a drawer. In the bathroom cabinets, along with Mulder’s shaving kit, Frohike found cosmetics, scented bath salts, even an unopened box of sanitary napkins. The bedroom and bathroom drawers held no prophylactics, of course.

 

Downstairs, Frohike discretely erased any sign Dana had been living with Mulder. When Margaret Scully arrived to get Emily or if the police came to interview Will, Emily would have a bedroom, but there would be no evidence of an adult female presence. That was Frohike’s job - to look out for his ballplayers. Help them remember the don'ts.

 

He checked on the children. Emily had squirmed out of her sleeping bag but kicked off a blanket when he tried to cover her. Will snored softly and looked like a young version of his father.

 

"Don't die," Frohike urged him silently, in case Mulder was out there in the ether watching over the children. "Not this afternoon. Not today. Don't make me wake them up and tell them you're dead. Hold on."

 

The telephone rang over and over, and a sleazy-looking reporter loitered on the front sidewalk.

 

Frohike closed the blinds, turned off the ringer on the telephone in the bedroom, closed the bedroom door, and let the children sleep.

 

*~*~*~*

 

"There wasn't much of a selection," Frohike told Dana when he returned from his shopping trip. He handed her the cheap brown wig. She laid it on the table beside a brown eyebrow pencil, a new lipstick, a few toiletries, and the clothing he'd chosen for her and Emily.

 

"I get the feeling you've done this before," she commented, looking at the wig unenthusiastically.

 

"Maybe I read too many spy novels."

 

"Maybe," she conceded. "But my money is on practical experience."

 

Dana didn't ask whose guesthouse they stayed in and Frohike hadn't offered. He used a telephone booth in town, making sure Dana's new ID's and passports would be ready on schedule. He wanted to call Byers to check in, but didn't. Whatever happened in New York happened; he couldn't change it. His job was to keep Dana and Emily safe, and get them as far from Them as possible.

 

"I did some intelligence work in the Pacific during the second war," Frohike admitted. "They needed help, and I was younger then. And taller. And eventually developed a basic grasp of Japanese, believe it or not."

 

He’d never told a soul. Not even Mulder. If people asked what Frohike did during World War II, he said he was a clerk. People believed the Army had desperately needed forty-eight-year old, pudgy, balding, five-foot-nothing clerks with no typing or shorthand skills in the South Pacific. Frohike had a scar on his ass from World War I, for God's sake. Every man in America went off to war, so when Uncle Sam called, Frohike felt proud to lend his talents - such as they were - to the cause.

 

"You were a spy?"

 

Frohike scratched the stubble on his jaw. "No. More like an artist touching up men's pasts. I set up the cover stories, made sure the men fit their roles, made sure the pieces came together. Not so different from what I do now."

 

"That's how you knew the project names," Dana surmised. "You helped bring the Japanese scientists to the United States."

 

He hesitated, but answered, "The scientists were a 'deal with the devil you know' decision. I'd rather know those morally bankrupt men are here, gelded and are under our watch, than working for the Soviets. It wasn't as if I got a vote, though."

 

She sank into a chair and cupped her hands around a glass of water. The guesthouse hadn't been used in a while, and the air was stuffy despite the laboring air conditioner. Moisture beaded on the outside of her glass, streaming down to the tabletop in little rivers. A drop of perspiration trickled from the base of her throat and disappeared down the neck of her wrinkled blue dress. He tried not to watch it.

 

"Were you at Pearl Harbor?"

 

"No. Not that day."

 

She dragged her thumb across the glass, wiping a clear arc. "My father and both of my brothers were. One brother made it." She sat quietly a moment, exhaled forcefully, and blinked. "Sorry. Hormones."

 

In the bedroom, Emily rolled over, pushing the covers off. Dana started to get up again. Dana had taken off the grimy pajamas her daughter wore when they fled the hospital this morning, leaving Emily to sleep in a pair of white cotton socks and white panties.

 

"I'll get her," he offered. He went to the bedroom and pulled the top sheet over Emily again. When he returned, Dana still sat at the dining room table, taking tiny sips of water. "She's sound asleep," he said awkwardly. "Why don't you join her?"

 

She shook her head. "I can't sleep."

 

"I'll listen if you want to talk."

 

Predictably, Dana shook her head again.

 

"I don't suppose I could convince you to eat something?"

 

"I did. While you were out. There were crackers and some canned pears-"

 

She stopped speaking as the phone rang, sounding piercing and shrill in the stale air. They both stared at it.

 

"Is it-" she started.

 

"No. It's nobody. No one knows where we are. Not Mulder, not John Byers: no one. The pitcher who owns this place is in Boston. He's not going to be calling his guesthouse."

 

"Maybe it's a wrong number."

 

"Maybe."

 

Frohike hadn't spotted a tail. They'd stopped four times since Manhattan: gasoline, bathroom breaks, and the burger joint. He chose their route randomly, staying on the back roads so anyone following them would be obvious. Aside from the filling stations, the carhop at the drive-up burger place, and the clerks at the drug and department store an hour ago, the only human he had contact with was the call he made from the phone booth.

 

Frohike continued staring at the ringing telephone. The skin on the back of his neck tingled.

 

"We have to go." He reached for his keys. "Now!"

 

Dana cleared the table in one motion, sweeping everything but her water glass into the shopping bags. Frohike went to the bedroom and picked up Emily - pillow, blankets, and all - and carried her outside. Dana followed, bringing his old rifle.

 

"No, the garage," he ordered as she started for his truck. She opened the garage doors, and he nodded to the Packard. "The keys should be in it. Back it out." He opened the passenger door and pulled the seat forward, laying Emily in the back. She opened her eyes groggily but went back to sleep.  

 

He returned to the driveway and started his truck, waiting while Dana backed the stately Packard out of the garage. He parked his truck in its place, grabbed the bags of cash, and took them with him.

 

Dana slid across the front seat to the passenger side as Frohike closed and locked the garage door. He tossed the Macy's bags into the car. He floored the gas and spun the steering wheel as he closed the driver's door. The Packard spun around on its white-wall tires, a long, luxurious expanse of cream and polished chrome. The motor purred as he shifted gears. The car glided smoothly down the dusty driveway. It was dusk, but he left the headlights off. Once they reached the paved road, Frohike rolled down the window. He listened for any cars he couldn't see.

 

He heard crickets.

 

Beside him, Dana fished in the bag from the department store. She found a scarf and tied over her hair. She leaned over the seat, making sure Emily was covered.

 

He'd stop at the first place they found and switch the Packard's license plate.

 

"Did we steal a car?" Dana asked, rolling down her window.   

 

"Its owner said 'stop by anytime, make yourself at home.'"

 

The night air flowed in, cool and moist, as the Packard slid through the forgiving darkness. "You think this was what he meant?"

 

"Probably not," Frohike responded, and turned on the radio.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Baseball season had ended. Aside from Byers calling with frantic questions every thirty minutes, Frohike had little work to do. Anything needing arranged or announced to the press could be done by phone or telegram. Frohike had nothing preventing him from returning to D.C. with William, though no one had specifically invited him.

 

According to Will, Mulder wanted to leave the hospital after the Demerol overdose but his blood pressure wasn't stable. Even sixteen hours later, a doctor accompanied Mulder home in an ambulance. As the paramedics maneuvered the stretcher up the stairs and transferred Mulder to his own bed, he didn't seem to feel a thing. The doctor checked him again, wrote his home number on a card, and gave it to Dana. He told her he was a big fan and to call during the night if she needed to. He’d be back early in the morning.

 

Dana went to the window as the ambulance drove away. On the bed behind her, Mulder hadn't moved. "Should I telephone his mother again?" she asked quietly. "I've left messages with her housekeeper."

 

"I can call her," Frohike volunteered. "She won't come, though."

 

Dana shook her head as if trying to fathom that.

 

"How are you going to do this alone?" Frohike asked from the doorway, with his hands in his pockets. 

 

"I'll manage. He wanted to come home. He's safer here." She went to the bed and put her hand on Mulder's. He mumbled unintelligibly and drifted away, snoring softly.

 

"You think someone tried to kill him? Again?" he added. 

 

The story ran on the front page of every paper in the world. Reporters called with questions, and Frohike wasn't sure what to tell them. Will said his father cooperated with the muggers. From the proximity of the shooter and the gun left at the scene, though, it looked more like a hit than a mugging-gone-bad. To Frohike, the Demerol overdose seemed too convenient a mistake. The police said attempted murder, but they dragged their feet about it.

 

"Yes." Dana sounded tired. "I think someone's trying to kill him."

 

"Why?"

 

She left the bedroom door open but switched off the light. "I don't know exactly. I just know They are."

 

Frohike mentally assigned a capital T to her 'They.' Lowercase t meant two muggers in an alley and a medical error. Uppercase T was Them, and far more inexplicably dangerous.

 

"If They get Mulder out of the way, there's nothing to stop Them from taking you again." Frohike worried his lower lip between his teeth. "May I ask a very, very indelicate question?"

 

Dana paused to look at him. "No. No, I don't think so," she responded, answering both his question and whether or not he could ask it.

 

She descended the stairs, stopping in the foyer to take off her white shoes and to feed the fish. 

 

Will glanced at her, but went back to watching television with Emily. He volunteered to baby-sit while Dana stayed with Mulder, which meant dishes filled the kitchen sink, the refrigerator had emptied again, and William thoughtfully piled all the dirty clothes on the bathroom floor for Dana to pick up. Currently, Will and Em sprawled on the rug atop a nest of pillows, blankets and sleeping bags, both in their pajamas, eating popcorn and passing a bottle of grape soda back and forth.

 

Dana picked a path across the living room, going to Mulder's desk. She took a deep breath and sat down, scooting the chair forward. She pushed the papers and files aside and reached for a notepad. "We'll need groceries," she said to no one in particular. "Gauze, tape: medical supplies. His prescriptions need filled."

 

William looked over his shoulder again. He started to get up.

 

"I can take care of it," Frohike offered. "Make a list." He gestured for Will to relax. Frohike brought a chair from the dining room and sat beside her at the cluttered desk. "Whatever you think you'll need."

 

Dana opened the center drawer and riffled through a Mulderish collection of odds and ends. "I'm not sure where his checkbook is."

 

"I'll take care of it," Frohike assured her.

 

"No, I can have Will sign his father's name. He can do Mulder's signature perfectly but I have to find the checkbook, first."

 

She wasn't even making sense. Mulder surely had an account at the local grocery and drug store - probably accounts she used. She didn’t need to find the checkbook, let alone have Will forge a signature.

 

"Miss Scully," Frohike said quietly. "I'll take care of it. We will; it's what we do. Langly can pay the bills and make sure you have housekeeping money. John Byers can handle anything Langly can't. We'll take care of everything else; you take care of Mulder."

 

She nodded, barely moving her head. She had dark shadows under her eyes, and her shoulders bowed in exhaustion. She’d worked the previous day, so she still wore her nurse's uniform and cap. Dana said she would take time off from the hospital to take care of Mulder, but she still had medical school. And Emily, getting over a nasty bout of pneumonia. And Will, who, despite his desire to be helpful, tended to be a full-time job in himself.

 

Frohike forgot, sometimes, how small Dana was. Her presence seemed larger.

 

"I know you don't want anyone in the house, but what about a few bodyguards outside in addition to the police?" Frohike suggested. "I'd feel better, and you'd sleep easier. It would only be until we're certain he's safe."

 

She said softly, mindful of the children, "When do you think that will be, Mr. Frohike?"

 

Frohike didn't answer because he couldn't. The police outside Mulder's hospital room hadn't stopped the overdose; Frohike saw no reason the ones outside the house would be any more effective. He couldn't protect Mulder if he didn't know who or what the threat was.

 

The babies, or lack thereof, Mulder and Dana conceived the previous winter were a taboo subject. The few times Frohike tried to broach it, Mulder changed the topic or found a reason to get off the telephone. Frohike understood the pain was fresh, but too many unanswered questions remained and too many pieces didn’t fit together. William was full of angry questions - thanks to Phoebe - but no answers. Arthur Dales, the FBI Agent who investigated Dana's disappearance, had all sorts of theories about government projects and genetic experiments and aliens. His theories sounded ludicrous unless someone was familiar with how the U.S. Government thought. 

 

Frohike was familiar. America wasn't subtle. Secrecy wasn't its strength, and the country knew it. The U.S. government didn't conceal its lies; it put them in plain sight and wrapped them in even bigger lies. It was an effective sleight of hand; give the audience a pretty magician's assistant and some pyrotechnics to stare at, and they paid little attention to the reality behind the illusion. 

 

In front of the black and white television screen, Emily and Will, along with the rest of the nation, watched Senator McCarthy's second round of hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The witch-hunt for communist spies began in the fall of 1947 and continued tearing lives apart and ruining careers. Among those questioned or accused of communism: Orson Welles, James Cagney, Walt Disney, Dorothy Parker, Gregory Peck, Arthur Miller, Lucille Ball, and Shirley Temple.

 

To Frohike, the hearings and accusations and paranoia about communism had the makings of an excellent smokescreen. There had to be something the government needed so much smoke and mirrors to hide. The United States of America was no more in danger of being overrun by communists than it was of being overrun by dinosaurs. Frohike didn't know where the deception ended and the truth began, but he knew more happened than met the eye. He knew Dana Scully, and now Mulder, was caught up in it.

 

"I don't know," Frohike answered long after the question had been forgotten.

 

"I do." A picture of Will sat the desk with a second snapshot wedged into the lower corner of the wooden frame. It was a photo Frohike took of Mulder, Dana, Will, and Emily playing in the snow in Central Park last December. Dana pulled it free, examined it for a long time, and watched the TV screen. "I need you to do something for me, Mr. Frohike," she said slowly.

 

"Of course. Anything," he agreed, a sucker for a pretty lady in distress. "What do you need?"

 

"I need you to hold a press conference. Tell the reporters you think communists in the U.S. government might be behind Mulder's shooting. He's an all-American hero and the Reds tried to have him killed because of it."

 

Frohike's eyes widened. "Is that what you think?"

 

"No, but it's what I want you to say. It's what will keep him safe."

 

"A preemptive strike." He caught up with her line of thinking. "If They, whoever They are, would try to harm him again, the public would be outraged and demand an investigation. You don't protect him yourself; you get every red-blooded American baseball fan to do it for you." 

 

She nodded, still holding the snapshot.

 

"Miss Scully, I think you show a talent for covert operations." He tapped a stack of FBI files fascinating Mulder as of late. "Maybe you should abandon medicine and consider a career in the Bureau."

 

She smiled, barely moving her lips. "They don't let women in the FBI, Mr. Frohike."

 

"Also, they have an arbitrary height requirement," he quipped. "Yes, I can hold a press conference. I'll do it today. Anything else?"

 

"Yes." He saw her debate silently. "I want you to put this in the newspapers," Dana said, handing him the snapshot of the four of them. "I'll write a caption. Have it run with the article."

 

"I can't," Frohike said. "This has Will and Emily in it."

 

Speculating about communists and letting the reporters run with the story was one thing, but Mulder didn't allow his son's photograph in print. Ever. When Mulder began dating Dana, he expanded the rule to include Emily. Except for a few tabloid rags, the newspapers and magazines complied. 

 

"It's important," she insisted. "I wouldn't ask otherwise."

 

His head started shaking as soon as his fingers touched the snapshot and it hadn't stopped yet. Frohike liked Dana, but his allegiance was to Mulder. No reason she could possibly give would convince Frohike to violate Mulder's wishes.

 

Dana picked up a pen, composed a few lines, tore the page off the pad, and handed it to him as well. He took it, glancing back and forth between the snapshot and her neat cursive caption about a 'majestic' December day Central Park.

 

"There's no book in this photograph. You aren't carrying a blue book. Or a paperclip. Miss Scully, this makes no sense at all."

 

"It will make sense to the right people. Everyone else will think it's a misprint. Please."

 

"To which people? Mulder would have my head on a pike if I did this," he protested, staring at the sheet of paper. "I'm sorry, but I can't-" He read the caption she'd written, reread it, and a light bulb began to flicker above his head.

 

Frohike knew which people.

 

At the close of World War II, Operation Paperclip imported Nazi scientists to the US, partially to acquire their research and partially to keep it out of Soviet hands. Frohike knew little about the project except it existed, and the government denied it existed. In the Pacific, the Kamakura Conference did similar for the Japanese scientists of Unit 731. The arrangement, though morally repulsive, advanced American knowledge of virology and bio-chemical weapons by decades. He heard whispers of what the US gained from the Nazis: years of research on genetics, physics, and medicine. Both projects remained classified, which likely meant both were still in operation when Dana enlisted as an Army nurse, and when Emily was born in 1949.

 

"Is this what I think it is?" he asked in a hoarse whisper.

 

"That depends. What do you think it is?"

 

"I think it's the opening move in a dangerous game. A very dangerous game."

 

Dana knew about Paperclip and the other projects. Not just the project names: something vital. Valuable. Something worth Mulder's life. She sent a message, but what the message was or to whom it was sent, Frohike could only imagine. Whatever cards she held, she seemed sure of her hand.

 

"They made the first move. I'm responding and upping the ante."

 

"Miss Scully, are you sure you know what you're doing?"

 

If Frohike put the photograph in the papers, Mulder would be livid. He might fire Frohike, though losing the commission wouldn't be nearly as hurtful as losing their friendship. Crossing Fox Mulder in regard to his family was unwise. At the minimum, Frohike would face a heated reckoning. Of course, if someone didn't do something to protect him, Mulder wouldn't be around for a reckoning.

 

"Miss Scully?" Frohike repeated. "What are you doing?"

 

"I'm keeping him safe," she answered evenly, her chin tilted upward in defiance. "Then, I'm washing dishes and fixing dinner."

 

Frohike heard a moan from the bedroom as Mulder woke. Mulder mumbled about dogs and boxcars and called for Dana as he thrashed around. Dana hurried upstairs. Emily trailed after her, bringing a threadbare stuffed kitten. Frohike watched them go, and he tucked the snapshot and piece of paper into his vest pocket.

 

He liked a pretty woman who fixed dinner after she saved the world.

 

*~*~*~*

 

A storm passed through about four in the morning, and the muggy remnants lingered over a collection of broken branches and debris. The radio announcer said a tornado had been spotted and power lines were down all over town. The motel had electricity, though: the bulb above the door of Dana and Emily's motel room flickered hesitantly, as if trying not to attract attention. Every other window of the horseshoe shaped motel remained dark.

 

In retrospect, Frohike wished he'd bought the blonde wig. The choices were black-black, white-blonde, and brown, and the brown was too dark against Dana’s fair skin. Even with the sunburn across her nose, now beginning to peel, the contrast was startling.

 

Dana's lipstick looked darker than usual, and the straight, shoulder-length brown wig covered her auburn hair. She'd cut Emily's hair into a short bob, and put a dress and a hat on the girl - a real hat, not Mulder's old baseball cap. Dana wore the slim black skirt and dark blouse Frohike selected, creating an artsy, beatnik look unlike anything he associated with her. Which was the idea.

 

"Hello, Mrs. Sanders," Frohike said, and opened the passenger door for her.

 

"Good morning," she answered softly. Dana held the front seat forward so Emily could crawl into the back. This time, the car was a mass-produced, middle-aged Buick. One of about ten thousand on the road. Dana didn't ask where Frohike got it or where he stashed the Packard they drove cross-country.

 

He put her suitcase in the trunk, noting she'd filled in the luggage tag with her new name. No home address. She was Donna Sanders. The new passports and driver's license were in the suitcase, along with a few spare aliases. Frohike converted some of the cash to bearer bonds, sent some to a numbered Swiss account, and the rest lined the bottom of her new train case in ten-thousand-dollar bundles.

 

After returning their motel keys to the clerk, who barely looked up from his sci-fi novel, Frohike pulled out of the parking lot and turned toward the train station. He drove through the dark, silent town. It was a short drive, and rather than wait inside the station, they sat in the car underneath a streetlight, leaving the engine running.

 

"Your ring," Frohike reminded her, gesturing to it.

 

She looked down. Dana twisted the engagement ring off and offered it to him.

 

"No, Mulder said for you to keep it. But-"

 

"But don't wear it," she said for him.

 

"Right," he agreed. "Don't wear it."

 

She curled her hand around the ring as she looked down the tracks toward the faint blush of sunrise behind the storm clouds. After a few minutes, Dana took off her necklace and threaded the chain through the ring so it hung beside the gold cross. She put her necklace on again, dropping the cross and ring down her blouse and out of sight.

 

Frohike should have told her to take it off, saying the ring and the cross were too recognizable as links to her old life. But he didn't. He offered her a plain wedding band, and she put it on. She didn't seem surprised it fit.

 

"Do you want to go over the plan again?"

 

Dana shook her head. She was a widow; her husband passed away serving his country; it was painful for her to discuss. Keep it simple: answer simply, live simply. Keep moving. Be likeable but keep to herself. Contact no one from her old life. If she felt in danger, she was. She had a telephone number to call in an emergency, and Frohike would put an ad in the Sunday New York Times once it was safe to come home. Until then, she and Emily stayed in hiding.

 

Dana was quiet a long time, watching passengers arrive, unload luggage from cars, and make their way to the platform. In the backseat, Emily colored, replacing each crayon in the box after she used it so they stayed in the original order. Frohike bought her the big box of Crayola crayons with the silver, all four blues, and the built-in sharpener.

 

"Are you all right?" he asked.

 

"I was wondering." She turned her face toward him. "Where are we, Mr. Frohike?"

 

She and Emily were asleep when they arrived last night, but Frohike hadn't realized she didn't know. "Topeka. Topeka, Kansas."

 

"Where are Emily and I going?"

 

"West. Somewhere between here and LA, pick a station and get off the train. The more random, the better. From there, the first train or bus that comes along: get on it. Repeat as necessary."

 

She nodded and went back to watching the tracks. Frohike turned the air conditioner on so the windows would stop fogging. The man on the radio said another storm was on its way. 

 

"You can do this," he reminded her, trying to sound comforting.

 

"I feel like I'm abandoning him."

 

"I'm sure he feels the same way."

 

"He wanted this so much," she told the window, putting her hand on her stomach. Lightning flashed in the distance, followed by a rumble of thunder seconds later. "Mulder wanted a miracle and he got one, but it's turned into a nightmare."

 

Frohike worried his lower lip, not sure how to respond. If that baby was what They thought it was, it would never be safe, regardless of what she had in a locker in Central Park. He overheard her conversation with Mulder about not having it, about having an abortion before she miscarried. If a miscarriage was inevitable, Frohike agreed. Staying pregnant seemed an unnecessary risk, especially alone.

 

Frohike knew a lovely working girl in Greenwich Village who sometimes made him dinner - and breakfast the next morning - and he had a taste for good beer, but otherwise Frohike would describe himself as a man of few vices. And he wasn't particularly forward-thinking in regard to race relations or feminism or communism or homosexuals. He was, however, practical. He witnessed Prohibition and the hell taking the moral high ground could yield. An alcoholic who wanted liquor would get it, legal or not. It seemed better to sell booze than wage a deadly, pointless, decade-long war against the bootleggers. And prostitution - the oldest profession: why send women to jail for willingly offering a service men willingly sought? Abortion was a tragedy, but a girl who didn't want to remain pregnant wouldn't, come hell or high water. If Frohike’s players called with a female companion in a fix, legal or not, Frohike could either tell the player which doctor to call for an after-hours appointment or start watching the papers for the girl’s obituary.

 

If Dana asked him to arrange an appointment, Frohike didn't think he could bring himself to do it. 

 

"Do you want to know a secret?" he asked as they watched the passengers milling expectantly around the platform.

 

He heard her sniff before she answered, "I bet you know lots of them."

 

"Fox Mulder says I'm the most paranoid, jaded, cynical man he's ever met. I tell him I have good reason to be." Frohike looked at her, feeling every one of his years weighing him down. "But I still believe in miracles. I like stories with happy endings: weddings, baby showers, birthday cake, ticker-tape, cookies and kittens."

 

She wiped her eyes and said shakily, "Cookies and kittens?"

 

"Communist dictators have fallen due to strategically placed cookies, kittens, sniper rifles, and rat poison," Frohike assured her, and earned a sad, tearful smile. "I know the stakes are high and the odds are against you, but you're young and healthy and beautiful. You have a good head on your shoulders, a sizable chunk of money, and a man who loves you unconditionally. See what you can do, sailor."

 

She chuckled half-heartedly and sniffed again. "Aye-aye, Captain."

 

"Your father would have been proud."

 

Her voice sounded tight as she warned him, "Estrogen and progesterone, Mr. Frohike: my body is producing hormones like there's no tomorrow. If I start sobbing, it could go on for days."

 

"Go ahead. It goes will with your grieving widow persona."

 

As he passed her a clean handkerchief, the train whistle sounded in the distance.

 

"Mommy, the train," Emily informed them, gathering up her crayons and coloring book.

 

"There's the train," Frohike repeated.

 

"Yes, there's the train," she echoed.

 

Frohike walked around to open Dana’s door, let her and Emily out, and handed Dana the train case. A porter came to take her suitcase, leaving them standing beside the car. The wind picked up, whipping her skirt against her legs and blowing her hair over her face. She tied a scarf around her head to make sure the wig stayed in place.

 

He tried to think of something else reassuring to say but only came up with, "Take care of yourself. Take care of Squirt," he added, using Will's nickname for Emily.

 

"You too. Take care of Mulder and Will." Dana put Emily on her hip and clutched the train case with her other hand. "Don't let them live on scrambled eggs, coffee, and deli takeout."

 

"I won't." Frohike put his hand on his hat to keep it from blowing off.

 

"Thank you."

 

"Just doing my job," he assured her.

 

He watched her walk away across the wet pavement, thinking she shouldn't be carrying Emily while she was pregnant, thinking a thousand things he needed to caution her about, thinking there had to be a happily ever after in this somewhere. 

 

Frohike watched as she and Emily bought tickets and boarded the westbound train. He waited to see if one of them came to a window to wave goodbye. Neither did. Rain began to pelt the roof of the car and the brim of his hat, drumming relentlessly.

 

He watched as the silver passenger train slid out of the station in a cloud of steam. It glided down the miles of tracks across the plain and into the storm on the dark horizon. Once it was out of sight, he exhaled, pulled the wet brim of his hat lower, switched on the Buick's headlights, switched on the windshield wipers, and put the transmission in reverse.

 

Melvin Frohike: 1; Bad Guys: 0

 

*~*~*~*

 

End: A Moment in the Sun: West

 


	5. Chapter 5

A Moment in the Sun: Bellefleur

 

*~*~*~*

 

He enjoyed being Walter Skinner. Walter Skinner was Sharon's husband, Anna and Walthari's only son, and his late Uncle Sergei's namesake. Walter Skinner had a nice house, a nice car, and a nice boat - though it seldom left the dock. All the other guys in the neighborhood borrowed tools from Walter Skinner. A man's man, people said.

 

Skinner still had nightmares of the war - the first one: the one foolishly called the war to end all wars. Sometimes, after a bad day, he dreamt of mustard gas rolling across a field as he struggled to get his mask on. At the time, he thought he’d been a man, but these days, to Skinner, teenagers seemed liked children.

 

He’d killed 89 men: seventy-one as a soldier, seventeen as a U.S. Marshal, and one young Marine who fell asleep after a boxing match in 1918 and never woken up. The last one was the worst, but Skinner reminded himself the name of the game was to be hit and hit back. Now, two decades had passed since he shot a man, and three years since he drew his weapon in the line of duty. Now, he didn't know if killing a man would bother him more or less than twenty years ago. More, he suspected.

 

Courtesy of his father, Skinner spoke Russian, a useful but politically dangerous skill to have these days. He picked up some Bulgarian from his maternal grandmother and he knew enough French to order a meal, give directions, and - like the other G.I.'s - negotiate with a prostitute.

 

He missed his mother, even after all these years. He missed the calm, steady tempo of her. He remembered sitting at the kitchen table as she opened her 1922 copy of Emily Post's “Etiquette.” "We will look it up," she'd said in response to his question, using the English phrase. She loved the book and consulted it at every opportunity. It was the correct way to do things, whether it was attending a wedding, dressing for the theater, or meeting the President. It was how to be American. His father would shake his head but listen as she read. If Skinner and Sharon attended a dinner party with more eating utensils on the table than he had hands (his father’s complaint about the fancy restaurant where they'd celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary) Skinner missed having his mother to advise him.

 

Sharon knew the right thing to do, though, so Skinner watched or asked her. They had met the President - several presidents - and Sharon never let him down.

 

His brother-in-law (whom Skinner thought of privately as 'The Cape Cod Asshole') used to needle him about having children. Skinner had said he and Sharon would start a family as soon as they decided they had too much sleep, money, spare time, and sex. It had been an outright lie, but it shut Asshole up for a decade.

 

Not long after, while Skinner worked for the Marshals, there had been a girl. A late-night clerk at the hotel. Young, pretty. A trip to Chicago and a night ending with five men in body bags: three mobsters, one U.S. Marshal, and the crooked politician the Marshals had been sent to protect. Skinner used the lavatory at a filling station to wash his friend's blood off his hands, but checking into the pristine hotel afterward with his suit smelling of gunpowder had seemed surreal. He'd thought he would call Sharon from the phone booth in the lobby. He’d wake her up, tell her he was okay before she saw the story in the morning paper. Hear her voice. He went to the desk to get his room key first though, and the pretty clerk asked him if something was wrong. It had just happened - a coward's excuse, he knew. It had nothing to do with his wife - he'd thought that was true. All Skinner ever told Sharon was he’d decided to go to work for Hoover; all she said was she felt relieved. For a few months, he waited for his telephone at the F.B.I. to ring, worried it would be the desk clerk, knocked up. He'd even decided how he wanted to handle the call, but it never came.

 

Sharon knew; Skinner felt certain of it.

 

Five months into working for Hoover, Skinner bought a boat, took three weeks off, and he and Sharon sailed up the East Coast to her family's estate. She summered there, wrote in her letters she missed him, and returned home. Life went on.

 

Life, in general, was good. Skinner could grill a T-bone, rebuild a transmission, still land a mean right hook, tell if a dress would fit his wife by eyeballing it, and - if push came to shove - iron his own shirts. He'd enjoyed being Walter Sergei Skinner for more than fifty years.

 

He didn't enjoy being Assistant Director Skinner these days.

 

Skinner put his back to the diner and stared at the stretch of wet asphalt leading through the one-horse town. The claustrophobic phone booth was cold and smelled of old cigarettes, damp wool, and mud. Outside, heavy clouds masked sunrise and a layer of fog lingered over the gravel parking lot.

 

"West of Middle-of-Nowhere,” Skinner told his wife over the telephone. “Somewhere in northwest Oregon, I think. The airplane had a mechanical problem and we had to land here."

 

"Are you all right?" Sharon’s voice was muffled by the long distance line.

 

"I'm fine. We landed fine. A deputy's going to drive us to Portland. We'll get a flight there and be home tonight. You won't even have time to miss me."

 

"Of course I will. Take care of yourself."

 

"Sharon-" He glanced over his shoulder, making sure his agents weren't eavesdropping outside the booth. "It's pretty here. Quiet. Lots of forests, mist, sky. We could build a cabin in the woods."

 

"Would you wear flannel?"

 

"I would wear flannel every day," he promised. "I'd stop shaving and spend all my time splitting firewood."

 

"Is there a Macy's near our cabin?"     

 

"Don't they have a catalog, City Girl?"

 

"Hum. I'll think about it." It sounded like she took a sip of coffee. "See you tonight?"

 

"I'm not joking."  

 

"You've been saying this for months, Walter."

 

"I've meant it for months. Hoover's had his twenty-five years out of me. Let's get as far away from Washington as we can." 

 

He heard a long pause, and a lukewarm, "We can talk about it once you get home."

 

He agreed, said goodbye, and opened the phone booth door so the cold, damp air rushed in. The bell on the diner door jingle-jangled as he entered, and he slid into the booth as their order arrived. His two agents picked up their forks eagerly, but Skinner looked at the platter of greasy eggs, limp toast, and burnt hash browns warily. He glanced up at the blonde waitress.

 

"Change your mind, sweetie?"

 

He wondered what about his demeanor and terse black suit screamed 'pat my ass, pinch my cheek, and call me sweetie.' He shook his head. There wasn't anything but a heart attack on the menu. She cracked her gum and sauntered away, giving his two agents something to look at. 

 

Once the view ended, the agents dug into their food, discussing the Seattle investigation between mouthfuls and gesturing with their forks to make points, emphasizing their own brilliance.

 

Bored, restless, Skinner poured cream in his coffee and watched it swirl gray.

 

"Would you like a fresh cup?" another waitress offered as she passed. "That one looks old."

 

"How can you have old coffee at seven in the morning?" he asked, looking up at her.

 

"We work at it," she answered with a hint of a smile. She took his cup and returned a moment later with a steaming mug. "Can I get you gentlemen some coffee?" she asked his agents.

 

They shook their heads without glancing up.

 

'Can I get you gentlemen some coffee?' Skinner heard the same voice echo in a corner of his mind. 'You look like you came from the office; can I get you gentlemen some coffee?'

 

Whatever the memory was, he shook it off and answered, "Thanks..." He checked her name tag. "Laura."

 

"You're welcome." She hesitated a half-second and walked away with his old mug, clutching it with both hands.

 

Lacking anything better to do, he watched her with the customers at the counter as she refilled cups and delivered and removed plates. She seemed familiar but he couldn't place her. She’d pulled her mousy brown hair into a low ponytail. She wore black-rimmed glasses and no makeup, making her look like a bookish teenager, though she wasn't. Over her blue uniform, she had on a baggy brown cardigan in an attempt to conceal a shapeless figure. She wasn't eye-catching but Skinner got the sense that was the idea. She didn't look like a beautiful woman, but still gave the impression of one.

 

"Sir? See something on the menu you like, sir?" one of his agents taunted.

 

Skinner gave him an icy stare. He’d lay money both the agents were dirty, but they were Hoover's pets. Too many of those worked at the FBI these days: too many men looking to make a name for themselves at the expense of innocent people. In the old days, it was mobsters and murderers and truly bad guys. Now, a man could point a finger and say 'communist' or 'homosexual,' form an investigative committee, look patriotic, and let a career unfold.

 

Without a word, Skinner got up. He picked up his mug and headed to the counter, bypassing their blonde waitress, who decided to make the rounds with the coffee pot.

 

"How 'bout a warm up?" He straddled one of the revolving metal stools at the end of the counter.

 

Laura nodded, turned to pick up the pot, and added half an inch of hot coffee to his cup. The little metal cream pitcher was empty. She brought him another, keeping her head down and seeming uncomfortable.

 

"I'm sorry. I don't mean to bother you, but do I know you?" he asked, feeling awkward.

 

"No, I don't think so."

 

"I'm Walter Skinner," he said, offering his hand. She shook his hand hesitantly. "My wife Sharon and I live in Alexandria. I work for the FBI. I’m responsible for Goofus and Goofus over there. What's your last name?"

 

Her mouth twitched to say one thing, but answered, "Samuels. Laura Samuels. I can't imagine how you'd know me."

 

"I can't either. You seem familiar, but obviously, I don't. Again, I'm sorry for bothering you."

 

At seven-thirty, the local deputy sheriff arrived to pick them up. His agents took their checks to the register. Skinner slid off the stool, still watching Laura at the other end of the counter. Why he would know a truck stop waitress in a no-name town was beyond him, but Skinner couldn't shake the feeling he did.

 

'A truck stop waitress. The others he nailed like a truck stop waitress,' he kept remembering a voice saying. Agent Dales' voice. 'The other descriptions he nailed like a truck stop waitress. Oh, sorry, sweetie. Sorry, sweetie.'

 

"Mulder," Skinner mumbled. Dales had been apologizing to Fox Mulder's girlfriend. Fox Mulder, the baseball player. Skinner looked at the waitress again, trying to get the overlay of the woman he remembered to fit her.

 

The waitress saw him watching, and she vanished to the back of the diner.

 

"What?" his agents responded in unison.

 

"Nothing. Go with the deputy and I'll catch up."

 

Skinner waited until they were outside leaning on the hood of the squad car and smoking cigarettes impatiently. The middle-aged deputy sheriff chewed a toothpick, folded his arms, and waited, looking unhappy.

 

"Miss Scully?" Skinner caught her in the hallway as she came out of the ladies' room. "You're Dana Scully, aren't you?"

 

"No, I-I don't know what you're talking about."

 

She tried to step around him. He blocked her path, putting his body between her and the rest of the restaurant. "Mulder brought me the film. It's safe. You're safe. Your daughter's safe."

 

She took a shaky breath and repeated, "I don't know-"

 

"Yes, you do. I know who you are. I'm a friend, Miss Scully."

 

"I don't know you. I don't know who Dana Scully is," she said forcefully. In a louder voice, she added, "I’m not interested, Mister. I'm trying to do my job, and I'd appreciate it if you'd leave me alone."

 

He backed away, apologizing. Maybe he was mistaken. He saw Mulder's girlfriend once, a year ago. The only attention he’d paid to Dana Scully was to note she was attractive, in love with Mulder, and to answer he preferred white turkey meat to dark.

 

Skinner paused in the gravel parking lot, looking through the diner window. She still stood in the hall outside the restroom, watching him. One hand rested on her stomach. She wasn't dumpy, he realized; she was expecting a baby. As soon as the woman saw him watching, she dropped her hand and turned away.

 

"That didn't take long," one of his agents said snidely as he joined beside the deputy's patrol car.

 

"Go with the deputy. I'll make arrangements for someone to pick me up later."

 

The deputy scowled. "That someone's gonna be me. What's the sense in making two trips?"

 

The agents opened their mouths to protest as well, but Skinner cut them off, saying it was an order. 

 

Inside the diner, across the street, Laura stood behind the counter again, waiting on the truckers. 

 

Skinner wasn't mistaken. That was Dana Scully.

 

*~*~*~*

 

He'd given the case one glance and decided, 'Dales.'

 

A famous baseball player's young girlfriend vanished, likely with a purse full of cash and jewelry. The love-struck player started making noise about kidnapping and conspiracies, made calls to some high-placed baseball fans, and the file wound up on Walter Skinner's desk. It was a waste of time and effort eager to devour Bureau resources. 

 

Special Agent Arthur Dales, please report to Assistant Director Skinner's office.

 

Three months later, police found the young woman near a railroad switching station in DC, nearly dead after a botched abortion. Dales tossed out a few wild theories but no one listened. Announcing he’d seen an alien lobster creature crawling out of a man's mouth a few years back pretty much blew Dales' credibility with the FBI - which was too bad. Danes had been a good agent, once. The FBI closed the case in April and Skinner hadn't given it another thought.

 

But by December 1954, Dales had a gleam in his eye foretelling inclement weather better than any barometer.

 

"Fox Mulder, the baseball player?" Skinner had asked in disbelief. He leaned back in his desk chair, resigning himself. Nothing Dales had to say was ever brief. "The one who was shot? Is he even out of the hospital?"

 

"No, Fox Mulder the tooth fairy," Dales retorted impatiently. "Of course, Fox Mulder the baseball player. I told him we'd drop by tonight. He has a house in Georgetown."

 

"Sure. Afterward, we'll drop in on Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster and see if they want to look at Bureau files. No," he said forcefully. "Go waste someone else's time."

 

"It'll take ten minutes." Dales looked like a kid about to be turned loose in a toy store with his birthday money. "You'll get to see Mulder's little honey in the flesh."

 

"Agent Dales, I can't convey to you the lack of interest I have in seeing Fox Mulder's 'little honey.'"

 

"It will take ten minutes. Twenty," Dales hedged. "Twenty minutes."

 

It took two hours.    

 

*~*~*~*

 

Skinner could walk to the elementary school but he could walk to everything in Bellefleur, Oregon. It was a typical small town: trusting, friendly. People waved. They left car doors unlocked and a key under the doormat. No one gave a second thought to a tall man in a suit and trench coat standing at the edge of the school playground. At ten-thirty, children filed out of the building zipped into a kaleidoscope of winter coats with their mittens pinned to their sleeves so they wouldn't lose them.

 

In the end of the line, next to the teacher, he spotted Emily Scully.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Hoover kept secret files on everyone of importance but had an especially thick one on Fox Mulder the Baseball Player. After spending the evening at Mulder's house, Skinner went back to the Bureau and read through it. He tried to figure out why a man with such a brilliant forensic mind spent more than a decade playing centerfield for the New York Yankees.

 

The answer was simple: Mulder had turned the FBI down. Mulder declined, married, and dropped out of graduate school. He moved to New York and, in January 1939, become a father. It wasn't hard to do the math. 

 

Originally Fuchs Wilhelm Mulder, born in 1915 in Boston to Wilhelm Mulder, a German-born American spy, and Teena Fuchs Mulder, a newly-immigrated German Jew. The couple's origins were mysterious, and handwritten notations in the file in German had been partially blacked out. After the First World War and the defeat of the German empire, their son became Fox William Mulder, probably unaware it wasn't his birth name or he was an American citizen by a few months. A daughter who followed was dubbed the very American Samantha Anna Mulder. A bright young man, Fox Mulder did well in school and got admitted early to Oxford University, where he studied criminal psychology.

 

Skinner rechecked the file months later, and he found no record of Samantha Mulder's disappearance. The Mulder family was prominent in Boston, and a missing little girl made front page news for weeks in 1929. The articles were easily accessible at the public library, but Hoover's files - available to any G-man with the right security clearance - made no mention of her beyond her birth as Fox Mulder's younger sister.

 

Mulder's file recorded a stellar baseball career interrupted by a stint in Europe during World War II. Skinner knew Mulder's batting statistics but not that he was awarded virtually every cross, star, and heart the Army had. His military record noted repeatedly he was 'a natural-born soldier,' which meant he'd been very good at killing people while not getting killed himself. Skinner found a notation of Mulder’s and another company taking an old munitions factory outside Munich, but the rest of the page was blacked out.

 

Hoover had blackmail material, though none particularly scandalous. Mulder went to AA meetings. He was divorced, and his ex-wife was a piece of work. His teenage son got into minor trouble. The file noted a few brushes with the law Mulder called in favors to fix, including getting abortion charges dropped against Dana Scully - which all but admitted he fathered the child she'd aborted.

 

Tucked between the newspaper clippings and the FBI reports - as if left there by mistake – Skinner found a sheet of paper listing about a dozen women's names, dates, and locations. Skinner recognized a few of the names: Mulder's girlfriend, his ex-wife, and a couple Hollywood starlets. Some women had stars beside their names: Marie-Anne Bernadette Dubois, Ada Eloise Muller, Diana Grace Fowley, Kristen Kilar, and Dana Katherine Scully. No key explained what the stars indicated, though. The list wasn't on FBI letterhead, and the FBI format for such information would have been a narrative: 'March 4, 1937. Informant states Mr. John Mobster continues an extra-marital affair with Miss Jane Strumpet at The Sealbach Hotel. Miss Strumpet is a marijuana user with a history of petty theft and forgery.' That could be useful to know, and expensive and time-consuming information to gather. The paper in Mulder's file was practically useless to the FBI, yet must have taken hundreds of hours to compile. 'Marie-Anne Bernadette Dubois* July 15-17, 1944 Caen, (Allied-Occupied) France'. As if someone collected data.

 

Initially, Skinner couldn't imagine the list constituted every woman Fox Mulder the Baseball Player had been to bed with. Skinner had protected professional athletes; twelve easy women constituted a busy week, not a lifetime. Regardless, Hoover or someone took an unusual interest in one baseball player's fairly banal love life. If government needed to know so badly, Mulder struck Skinner as the kind of man who - if asked privately to name the women he'd been with and told it was for national security - would answer honestly.

 

The list made no sense. Eventually, Skinner replaced the sheet of paper and moved on.

 

Skinner learned Mulder wasn't Emily Scully's father, which surprised him. He’d assumed Mulder and Dana Scully were long-term lovers, though she hadn't struck him as the type of woman cocky, newly-wealthy athletes kept as mistresses. But Mulder wasn't a cocky, newly-wealthy athlete. His background was privileged and he'd have been perfectly happy behind a podium at Oxford, buried in academia and wondering why his lectures were so popular with the undergrad girls.

 

No homosexuality. No drugs. No prostitutes. No psychiatrists. No illegitimate children. Fox Mulder voted, ate red meat, and was more conservative than Skinner had expected. If the list of women and dates was all-inclusive, except for his time in the Army, Mulder had been faithful to his wife. Except for a few months last spring, he was faithful to his girlfriend, too. Lately, Mulder had taken an interest in Nazi medical research and UFOs, but Skinner saw no evidence of subversive activity. Mulder's girlfriend was his biggest political liability.

 

Skinner stayed in the office late into the night, reading page after page in dumbfounded wonder. Fox Mulder was, in every respect, an extraordinary man. Extraordinary enough someone - likely someone outside the FBI – kept tabs on who he slept with. The blacked-out sections in the report puzzled Skinner, too, as if secrets existed about Mulder above Skinner's security clearance. Above Walter Skinner was an exclusive group: Hoover, Eisenhower, and God.

 

Intrigued, Skinner pulled the FBI file on Dana Katherine Scully. Not Agent Dales’ X-file; the FBI’s other file. The file Dales’ didn’t have the security clearance to know existed, let alone review.

 

Skinner found her file empty except for cross-references to files 1949 DKS-ALK and 1954 DKS-FWM. He recognized two sets of the initials; he suspected the years were birth or conception dates. The code was easy to crack but it didn’t correspond to any government agency Skinner knew. Which left Hoover, Eisenhower, God, and whoever oversaw them.

 

*~*~*~*

 

For the first time in his career, Skinner flashed his badge to gain access to something he had no authorization to investigate. The school principal was hesitant but made a few calls - including one to the deputy sheriff's office – relented, and summoned Katie Samuels to the office.

 

"I can't imagine what the FBI wants with her," the woman protested while they waited. "Katie's new here but she's a bright girl. She's never any trouble."

 

"I'm sure she isn't," Skinner answered. He spotted the hall monitor returning with Emily. "Thank you. This will only take a few minutes."

 

Skinner walked to meet Emily halfway. He glanced back. The principal watched him with her arms folded and her lips drawn thin in disapproval. 

 

Everything in the school seemed undersized, as though he'd stumbled into Munchkin Land. Miniature water fountains and desks and bookshelves: an entire world was eye-level with his waist.

 

He squatted down. Emily regarded him warily. "I'm not supposed to talk to strangers," she informed him, her forehead creasing.

 

"I'm not a stranger; I'm Mulder's friend. You told me about Bub, and George's Town, and flashing flashlights, and Mulder and your mommy getting married. Remember? I'm Walter. I'm more than six."

 

She shook her head and looked around nervously.

 

"Yes, you do. Emily, I need to ask-"

 

"That's not my name!"

 

"Shush," he insisted quietly. "I promise I won't tell anyone. Do you remember who I am?"

 

She bit her lip and looked past his shoulder, at the principal. 

 

"Do you remember me coming to your house to talk to Mulder? After he was shot? Your mommy was taking care of him."

 

"My real Daddy shot Mulder. Then Mulder shot him," the little girl said uncertainly.

 

He blinked. At no point in Mulder's odd narrative of the events leading up to bringing Skinner the autopsy film did Mulder mention shooting anyone. "Did your Daddy die?" he asked. "Emily, when Mulder shot him, did he die?"

 

"You're finished," a woman's voice said sharply from behind him, sounding out of breath. "Katie, come here," she ordered. Emily hurried past him.

 

Skinner glanced back and stood. He found himself eye-to-eye - or rather, eye-to-top-of-her-head - with Dana Scully. Or Laura Samuels. Or whoever she was. The principal must have called her after he asked to speak to Emily.

 

"You have no right to question my daughter," she said icily, making him glad she didn’t hold a weapon. Skinner had a gut feeling Dana Scully was far more dangerous than Fox Mulder.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Walter Skinner was one of the Assistant Directors of the FBI, for God's sake. He'd protected and arrested politicians, mobsters, business tycoons, famous actors, and four-star generals. Not much shocked him and not much impressed him, especially not celebrity.

 

But the eight-year-old boy inside Skinner wanted to jump up and down and squeal, “It's Fox Mulder, oh my God, it's Fox Mulder!” and ask for an autograph. The man was a legend, not because he was an incredible athlete - though he was - but because he made it look effortless. Mulder made baseball a gentleman's game and every American boy sure they could grow up to be him.

 

Unfortunately, Fox Mulder the Baseball Player seemed unaware he should be exciting. Larger than life. Oblivious he should have a movie soundtrack playing around him at all times. Something by Sousa. 

 

"Come in," Mulder had invited when Skinner showed up on his doorstep with a stack of unsolved cases. Mulder wore an old gray flannel shirt and blue jeans, no shoes, and held a half-eaten turkey sandwich. “American Bandstand” blared from both the television and the radio. A handsome, dark-haired teenage boy sprawled on the sofa with the telephone cradled against his ear. "Let's go to the kitchen," Mulder suggested, "It's quieter."

 

"Daddy-O, I can't hear!" the kid snapped in a British accent.

 

"I wonder why?" Mulder threw a cushion at his son. "We have a guest. At least take your feet off the sofa, Will."

 

The boy ignored him and told whoever was on the other end of the telephone line, "No, my father's being square. It's nothing. Where are you keen to go?" Will grinned expectantly. "Of course I have wheels, baby."

 

Mulder leaned close to Skinner and whispered a request. A school of curious fish formed at one end of the aquarium.

 

As per his instructions, Skinner furrowed his brow. He whipped out his badge, flashed it at Will, and said tersely, "I'm Assistant Director Walter Skinner with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I'd like to speak with you about plagiarizing a term paper."

 

"Oh, bloody hell!" Will dropped the telephone and scrambled up. "It wasn't my idea!"

 

"Do you realize that's a federal crime in the United States, son?"

 

"I didn't plagiarize anything," Will insisted. "The girl who did the assignment for me plagiarized."

 

Behind Skinner, Mulder doubled over laughing with one hand clutching his chest.

 

His son's mouth hung open. Realizing he'd been tricked, he frowned angrily. "You're not funny! Neither of you!" Will hurled the cushion at his father. "You scared the hell out of me! Bloody hell - it's not funny, Daddy-O!"

 

"Neither is the little line on your report card changing a D to a B," Mulder said, "That's forgery, right Mr. Skinner?"

 

Skinner nodded helpfully.

 

"Is that even a real badge? He’s probably not even with the FBI. I hate you both!" the boy informed them, and stalked off.

 

"You're good," Mulder told Skinner as they pushed through the kitchen door to the relative silence there. "Usually the Wonder Boy has to know someone for several minutes before he hates them."

 

"Is it always this exciting around here?" Skinner asked as he opened his briefcase. He waited for the pomp and circumstance, but saw a regular guy - with sock feet, an old shirt, messy hair, a rebellious teenage son, and breadcrumbs on his counter - doing regular guy things. With a Porsche parked out in the driveway costing more than Skinner made in three years. A Yankees cap hung beside the kitchen phone. Skinner had the urge to touch it to see how it felt. He'd sniff it, but that would make him a pervert.

 

Mulder shrugged his good shoulder. "Dana and Emily will be back in an hour," he said. "They went to the grocery store."

 

Skinner waited for 'and we're flying to Paris for champagne cocktails.'

 

"We're having meatloaf," Mulder added, and nodded enthusiastically. 

 

*~*~*~* 

 

"Answer me. Does Mulder know where you are?" Skinner followed Dana Scully across the schoolyard and down the sidewalk. Inside the five-and-dime store, customers stopped browsing to watch. This was the dramatic highlight of the winter season in Bellefleur. "He doesn't, does he?"

 

She ignored him and kept waddling as fast as she could, clutching her daughter's hand. Emily looked back nervously and stumbled as she tried to keep up.

 

"Does Mulder even know about the baby?"

 

She whirled around, five feet, two inches of ferociousness. "Leave us alone!"

 

"Or is it not his baby?" That seemed unlikely, but she wore a wedding band. Perhaps she'd married someone else - a man who let her wait tables in a diner while she was expecting. Nice people found it embarrassing to have a wife working at all, let alone at a diner with a baby on the way. "Is that it?"

 

"How dare you!" she exploded, making him take a step backward on the snowy sidewalk. "Who do you think you are?"

 

"I told you. I'm a friend."

 

"You're not our friend. If you were, you'd leave us alone!"

 

She turned away again and pulled Emily after her. Emily stumbled, and her mother bent to pick her up. Dana started to stand but gasped and put her daughter down quickly. She put one hand on her belly and awkwardly fell forward onto her hands and knees with her face contorted in pain.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder had been recovering from nearly lethal gunshot wounds. His left hand was clumsy. He’d wince if he coughed or laughed. He got tired. Skinner saw Mulder pushing himself to finish reading a file or creating a description of a suspect.

 

If Skinner had Fox Mulder’s injuries and bank account, he’d have quit the FBI and recuperated in Acapulco.

 

"Why are you doing this?" Skinner asked one afternoon after hearing Mulder lie to his girlfriend over the phone. Dana called from school, and Mulder assured her he was resting, had taken his pain pill, and eaten the lunch she left. Skinner had been in Mulder’s living room for over an hour, and Mulder had done none of those things. "I'm glad you are. This is groundbreaking forensic science, but-"

 

The 'but' was 'the FBI won’t give an ex-baseball player credit for solving their cases.' Skinner paid Mulder the Bureau's consulting fee, which Mulder probably used to have someone put a new wax job on the Porsche. It wasn't about money or glory, and Mulder's dissertation involved using solved cases, not being the one doing the solving.

 

"I-I had a sister." Mulder answered after a long pause and two sips of tea. "We were in the woods behind my parents' summer house, I turned my back, and she vanished. They never found her body. And they never caught whoever took her."

 

"How old was she?"

 

"Nine." Mulder cleared his throat and picked up the file again. He sifted through the stark crime scene photos of a half-dozen female victims. "I was thirteen."

 

"I'm sorry," Skinner said uncomfortably, and meant it.

 

Instead of giving some pat answer, Mulder leaned forward. He put three crime scene photographs in front of Skinner and pointed out an obscure detail present in all three. Mulder speculated on the killer's MO and acted like his sister had never been mentioned. So Skinner had let him.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Just as Skinner felt too large for the Bellefleur Elementary School, Emily seemed too small for the chairs in the hospital hallway. She sat alone. Her feet swung far above the floor, encased in white anklets and little black and white saddle shoes. She wore a plaid wool jumper, and she arranged the pleated skirt neatly so the plaid pattern lined up.

 

"Your mommy's going to be fine," Skinner said awkwardly, sitting on the chair beside her. "Do you want something to drink? Coffee?  No," he amended, "Hot chocolate. Would you like some hot chocolate?"

 

She shook her head without looking up.

 

"Are you hungry?"

 

Another shake of her head.

 

"Emily- Katie, your mommy's fine. The doctors are taking good care of her. She had, uh, a bellyache."

 

Emily looked up at him like she thought he was stupid. "My mommy's going to have a baby. If a mommy and a daddy love each other, from the mommy's tiny egg and the daddy's sperm - it grows into a baby. It's growing in her womb."

 

"Oh," he said, embarrassed. "Yes, that's right."

 

Skinner took off his eyeglasses. He wiped them with his handkerchief as he wondered what the hell he was doing. So Mulder - or someone - got his girlfriend pregnant. Again. So, for whatever reason, they parted ways. Again. So Dana wanted to live in Nowhere, Oregon under an assumed name and either marry some loser or pretend she was married. Skinner could be halfway back to D.C., but he sat in a hospital west of Middle-of-Nowhere, interfering with something, unless a crime had been committed, not his business in the first place.

 

"Is Mulder going to come?" Emily watched the doctor enter her mother's room at the end of the hall.

 

"Do you think I should call him?"

 

She shrugged. "He came last time. When Mommy got sick."

 

"Mulder came to the hospital when your mommy was sick? What happened?"

 

"They had a fight."

 

"Who had a fight? Your mommy and Mulder?"

 

"No, Mulder and Uncle Bill. It was scary. The police made Mulder leave in their car. We weren't supposed to talk to Mulder. But he called Grammy's house one time while Mommy was sleeping." Emily leaned forward, taking him into her confidence. "I talked to him. Mommy doesn't know."

 

"Oh."

 

"Grammy said never to tell Mommy, and to never do it again. She said it was Mulder's fault Mommy was sick."

 

"Oh."

 

"Bubby says a womb is an elephant fart," Emily added.

 

"Oh."

 

*~*~*~*

 

Skinner had known he was in trouble when they didn't invite him to sit. The men around the conference table let him stand while they finished their cigarettes, as if he were a junior agent. Hoover stayed behind his desk, focused on something outside his office window, and never said a word.

 

"We have a question about one of your expenditures," the Deputy Director informed him, leafing through a sheaf of papers.

 

Skinner waited.

 

"George Hale," he said casually. "The Bureau's contracting with him as a forensic expert?"

 

Skinner waited. He filed all the paperwork, went through all the channels, and made no attempt to hide who George Hale was. It was a name to go on the reports. Anyone in the FBI could easily crosscheck the files.

 

"George Hale died in 1938, Assistant Director."

 

"Yes, he did. It's an alias for Fox Mulder, the baseball player. Surely you recall, sir. You signed off on his background check."

 

The Deputy Director's cheekbones broadened as he gritted his teeth. "You will cease contact with Mr. Mulder. I will instruct him to return all Bureau materials immediately, and you will refrain from contacting him in the future for any reason. If he contacts you, you will refer him to me."

 

Skinner put his hands on his hips is disbelief. "May I ask why?"

 

"It's a matter of national security," another man answered, smoking his cigarette languidly.

 

"National security? Fox Mulder? If you've read his file, you know the FBI tried to hire him once. After he's a veteran and a national icon, he's a risk to security?" The answer was a puff of smoke from the old man at the far end of the table. "How is he possibly a threat to national security?"

 

"He's a homosexual," came a response. A pile of glossy photographs slid across the table.

 

Skinner picked it up the top one and examined it for a few seconds. It was unquestionably Mulder, bare-chested - before he was shot - spooned up in bed to a smaller figure. The person lying in front of him was covered with a sheet from the waist down, and Mulder's arms were around the chest, but the face belonged to a young man. The arms and shoulders, however, looked decidedly feminine.

 

"His girlfriend wears a little gold cross around her neck." Skinner tossed the photograph back and tapped the base of his throat. "Whoever glued this together, it would be more convincing if he'd take it out of the photograph."

 

"Then he's a pedophile."

 

Skinner tilted his head, realizing how this game was played. "I suppose you have incriminating photos of him reading a bedtime story to his son? Why are you doing this? What has he done, aside from help solve some of our toughest cases?"

 

"Would you like to see his communist party membership card?"

 

"No, I'd like some answers," he shot back. "I know this man. He's about as far from a security risk as you can get."

 

"With all due respect, Assistant Director Skinner, if you know him so well, we should look closer at some of your associations."

 

"Are you threatening me?"

 

"Let's say we're cautioning you," the smoking man responded.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Skinner had nieces and nephews, but his primary experience with small children was having been one himself. He and Sharon had wanted a family and applied themselves wholeheartedly to that end. If effort counted, they should have a dozen children. Months, years, and a decade slipped past. They talked with a doctor, who scratched his head and told them to keep trying; all the plumbing seemed in working order. Eventually, they grew tired of focusing on the plumbing and decided to enjoy the facilities, leaving post-World War II America to boom without them. People stopped asking, and Skinner rarely gave it any thought these days.

 

If he and Sharon had a baby when they first married - or even if the hotel clerk had gotten in trouble – the baby would be Dana Scully's age. They might be grandparents. Men his age had children with a younger wife, but he could also have a granddaughter Emily Scully's age.

 

It seemed absurd, but it made Skinner feel far too old for this kind of shenanigans.

 

Emily accepted a cup of hot chocolate from the vending machine, but wrinkled her nose at the layer of chocolate sludge at the bottom and drank barely half. The nurses offered cookies; she shook her head. She sat quietly, arranging her pleats or watching her feet, and fell asleep with her head on one chair and her backside on another. Skinner covered her with his coat, not sure what else to do. Mulder never shared the details of the girl's illness but Skinner knew it was serious. Possibly terminal. He didn't know if she should have medicine or treatment or if he should call someone. He asked Emily. She mumbled her name was Katie and he should ask Mommy.

 

"Sir?" the doctor said, coming toward them. 

 

Skinner left Emily and went to talk to the doctor privately, in case the news was bad, but Emily woke and trailed down the corridor after him. To his surprise, she reached for his hand. He glanced down at her, wondering how so much composure fit into such a small package.

 

"Mrs. Scully is rundown. We're giving her fluids. We'll monitor her overnight, and she can go home in the morning. She needs to be resting and eating more, though. I'm worried she's under-weight. Do you know how much she weighed before she was expecting?"

 

"One hundred and fifteen pounds," Skinner answered, remembering from the missing persons report.

 

"I want her up to one-thirty by the time she comes to term. Don't worry; the weight comes off once the baby comes. Milkshakes, deviled eggs, extra cream in her coffee," the young doctor listed. "A glass or two of wine would help her sleep, since she seems so restless. No relations," he added obliquely. "Not forever - just until she's healthier. A few weeks. Has she ever-" The doctor stopped, glanced at Emily, and asked, "Is there somewhere the girl can wait?"

 

"No."

 

The doctor fiddled with his pen. "There's scarring, the kind we see after a complicated miscarriage. When the woman can't or won't get to a hospital. Was that something you were aware of?"

 

"Yes," Skinner answered curtly. For reasons beyond him - and as if he had a horse in this race - he added, "It was a long time ago."

 

The doctor nodded, appeased. "She needs to take it easy. Stay off her feet. She's made it this far along. Do what I've recommended, say your prayers, and with luck, your wife and baby should be fine."

 

"She's not-" But he nodded. "I'm glad."

 

"She's resting, but you can see her," the doctor said. He held the door to Dana's room open for them. "For a moment."

 

She lay propped up on pillows with her head tilted to one side as she slept. Under the sheet, her belly was more obvious. Her glasses were gone, as was the brown wig. Her face seemed thinner, more shadowed and hunted. Her auburn hair fell in waves across the pillow, and he saw a series of ugly purple marks on her arm where someone tried unsuccessfully to put an IV in before finding a vein in the back of her hand. A small gold cross hung from her necklace, with an old, filigree engagement ring beside it. Even from a distance, the diamond looked impressive.

 

He hesitated at the door. Emily went to her mother and stood beside the bed uncertainly for a moment. Dana opened her eyes groggily as Emily sat, making the mattress dip. "Mommy?" she said apprehensively, looking at the IV.

 

"Are you all right, honey?" Dana turned her head, seeming to struggle to focus on her daughter's face.

 

In response, Emily lay down beside her mother, resting her head on her shoulder. Dana put one arm around her. She stroked her hair and put her other hand on her belly. She bit her lip, looking at the bare hospital walls as though trying to remember what had happened or where she was.

 

"She's exhausted," Skinner said from the doorway. "It's after ten o'clock at night, but I wasn't sure where to take her. Is there someone who can keep her tonight?"

 

"No, there's-" She stopped. "There's-" Dana shook her head slowly, and looked around the room again. Her gaze stopped on him, and she blinked as she tried to place who he was.

 

"Assistant Director Walter Skinner with the F.B.I. We met last fall at Fox Mulder's home in Georgetown."

 

She inhaled and started to sit up.

 

"Don't. You're supposed to rest. I'm here to help. Emily's fine. The baby's fine, but the doctor wants you to rest. Do you want me to call Mulder?"

 

"He said he should," Emily whispered to her mother, and looked expectantly at the phone on the hospital nightstand.

 

Dana nodded slowly, but it seemed to be an 'I understand' rather than a 'yes, call Mulder' nod. "Could you give us a minute, Mr. Skinner?"

 

"Of course," he answered. He backed out of the room and closed the door.

 

Skinner leaned against the smooth wall beside her door and folded his arms. He needed to call Sharon again. He needed to check in with the Bureau. His stomach growled, reminding him he needed more sustenance than hospital vending machine coffee.

 

A nurse approached with her shoes squeaking against the floor. "Is Mrs. Scully all right?" she asked, pausing, clipboard in hand.

 

"She's fine. She wanted some privacy."

 

"Of course, Mr. Scully," the nurse responded, smiling sweetly before she moved on.

 

Mr. Scully, he mouthed in tired bemusement. The admitting nurse got what he said turned around and assumed he was Mr. Dana Scully - Dana being his first name, not hers. It didn't seem worth correcting them. The whole day had taken on a surreal tone, and that capped it.

 

He rested the back of his head against the cool, solid wall, but turned as the door opened. Dana emerged dressed in her waitress uniform and shrugging her winter coat over it. Her auburn hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She pressed a Kleenex over the place on her hand where she’d removed the IV. Emily held onto her mother's skirt, looking both ways to make sure the coast was clear.

 

"Where are you going Miss Scully?" he asked in disbelief. "You're supposed to be resting."

 

She responded by walking calmly past him, toward the elevator.

 

"Miss Scully?" Skinner called, following her. "Where are you going?"

 

Emily glanced back at him and up at her mother.

 

"Miss Scully?" he repeated, hands on his hips, as she waited for the elevator. Dana stared straight ahead, and once the doors opened, stepped inside. She turned and pushed a button. Beside her, Emily waved bye-bye as the doors closed.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Sharon teased Skinner at heart, he was an overgrown hall monitor with a badge and a big gun. He told her he went to grammar school in a one-room schoolhouse; they didn't have hall monitors - much to his disappointment. He liked order, though: having a clear distinction between right and wrong, duty and dishonor. Follow the rules, protect the public. Still, he knew the world wasn't black and white, but shades of gray. The older he became and the farther he rose in the FBI, the more the moral high ground became a slippery slope. It got hard to tell the heroes from the villains, but he still tried, damn it.

 

Yes, Agent Dales was out of line in showing Bureau files to a civilian, but Jesus Christ - it was Agent Dales. Bigger fish to fry. Yes, Skinner involved Mulder in cases before Mulder had security clearance, but the background check was a formality. Fox Mulder was a good guy. Not an angel, but on the right side. He wasn't a threat to democracy. Or heterosexuality.

 

The Deputy Director instructed Mulder to return all Bureau materials, which Mulder had. Dales got suspended for two weeks without pay and returned to his cubbyhole to mutter about aliens and conspiracies.

 

The morning after Skinner’s conversation with the Deputy Director and the smoking man, Skinner unlocked his desk drawer to find dog-eared paperback novel with two men embracing on the cover. To reinforce the point, a communist party card bearing his name served as a bookmark. It didn't matter he wasn't a communist or the closest he came to being a homosexual was having a second cousin who liked show tunes. Skinner was if They said he was.

 

He began making noises to Sharon about leaving the FBI.

 

The Mad Bomber Case made its way to his desk. The bombings plagued New York for more than a decade but were rapidly escalating. Previously, the bomber targeted Consolidated Edison office buildings, but by spring 1954, he began striking libraries, subway stations, stores, and theaters. The bomber wrote to the police, taunting them. In each instance, the area was evacuated and the bomb found, but the entire city feared going out. With each bomb, they got less warning. An hour's notice before a bomb would have exploded in Grand Central Terminal had been the final straw for Skinner. He'd left his agents to scratch their heads, and gone to The Plaza Hotel.

 

After several un-returned messages, a concierge mentioned they expected Mr. Mulder late that afternoon. Another message went unreturned. Skinner ambushed Mulder and expected Mulder to tell him to kiss his ass, but Mulder hadn't. He told Skinner to watch Emily and, in five minutes, went through the case like he read the bomber's mind. Mulder barely seemed to be paying attention. The hotel buzzed about Fox Mulder and Dana Scully getting married. Emily was chattered, then complained about her stomach, yet Mulder's description of the bomber was dead on.

 

The FBI arrested George Metesky a month later. He was exactly the man Mulder described.

 

Skinner began to suspect the FBI's true objection to Mulder. Not that Mulder couldn't help catch the bad guys, but Mulder could. Some bad guys, the FBI didn't want caught.

 

"Mr. Skinner," he'd heard the smoking man said from behind him, in The Plaza’s lobby. "You're a long way from home." A chill ran down his spine at the unspoken message. 'And your wife's home alone.'

 

Skinner might have appeared cool on the outside, but inside, the moral mechanisms of his conscience jammed and grated like an over-wound watch. Mulder looked confused and hurt at Skinner's sudden formality. Skinner stammered about Dana and Emily being special before the polished doors closed and the upholstered elevator carried Mulder and Emily upward, to a world above Skinner’s pay grade. Skinner turned, but the smoking man was gone.

 

Skinner couldn’t get a fast enough flight out of New York, so he borrowed a car and drove back to D.C., ninety miles per hour all night. He found Sharon asleep in their bed with her reading glasses sliding down her nose and her book open in her hand. He stripped nude and curled up behind her, holding her tightly in the darkness.

 

Mulder had been correct about something else. At the end of the day, she was what made it all worthwhile.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Skinner passed the point of common sense without a backward glance and approached the sign for Point of Ludicrous. Even if Fox Mulder killed Emily's 'real Daddy,' Skinner had no jurisdiction. He wasn't Agent Dales; he didn't investigate any crime interesting him. There was protocol. Procedure. It was a local matter, not an FBI investigation.

 

"Open up or I'll come back with a warrant," Skinner told the door. She was home; light seeped out beneath the door. Skinner doubted he could get a warrant, but she didn't know that.

 

Dana Scully opened the door, positioning most of her body behind it. The apartment sat atop a bakery, a block off the main road through Bellefleur. A patrol car drove past, its headlights temporarily illuminating the dark street.

 

"I need to clear something up," Skinner assured her. "That's all. I got your address from the diner. I told you, I'm a friend."

 

Her old eyes were out of place on her young face. She still wore her waitress uniform but had her hair twisted into a hurried knot on top of her head. "I don't understand what I've done," she said evenly. "Why are you bothering us?"

 

"I want to talk to you. Please, may I come in?"

 

Dana looked at him, and over her shoulder. Nice girls didn't invite men into their apartments at night. It wasn't proper, whatever the circumstances.

 

"Or we could go get a cup of coffee. Or something to eat." The doctor wanted her to eat. "I need to talk to you."

 

"About what?"

 

"About Mulder."

 

"Mommy?" Emily emerged from the back of the apartment. She still wore her school clothes, though it had to be hours past a child's bedtime.

 

"Do you have shoes on?" Dana asked without looking, and Emily answered she did. "Put your coat on. Please wait a minute, Mr. Skinner," she requested, starting to close the door.

 

Skinner put his hand on it, keeping it open. She'd managed to vanish from the hospital lobby and the parking lot. She'd been absent from the Greyhound bus station and the Amtrak depot. The town had no taxis, so he had no idea how she got back to Bellefleur, but she did. He wouldn’t give her the opportunity to shimmy out the back window of her apartment and disappear again.

 

Dana reached for her coat and wrapped it around her shoulders. She took her house key and her daughter's hand. She instructed him to follow her down the old wooden steps and around to the back door of the closed bakery. Shivering, she unlocked a steel door. Skinner followed her through the kitchen to small booth near the front window. The glass display cases were lit, casting an eerie glow behind the register. The air smelled of yeast and sugary icing, and the tiled table felt cool under his fingertips.

 

Emily slid into the booth and laid her head on the table tiredly.

 

"If I get you a muffin, will you eat it?" Dana asked. "What about a doughnut?"

 

Emily nodded, and Dana retrieved one from the case, leaving a nickel beside the register. She put the stale doughnut on a napkin in front of her daughter, where it sat uneaten. Emily put her head on the table again and closed her eyes.

 

"Please understand I'm not trying to pry into your private life," Skinner assured her awkwardly. "Whatever happened between you and Fox Mulder is your business. My concern is this: I know an attempt was made on his life last year. It was my understanding the man who shot him was never identified. But today, Emily told me her 'real Daddy' shot Mulder, and Mulder had shot him. That's what concerns me. If a crime has been committed. Or if Mulder's shooter can be identified."

 

"If you think a crime's been committed, why not call the police?"

 

"Because I'm not sure one has. Or the circumstances involved. I have no proof Mulder shot anyone. There's no body and no missing person's report. The only evidence I have is the word of little girl."

 

Dana put her hand on her daughter's back, making sure she was asleep. "I don't know who her father is," she said quietly. "Neither does she. There is no 'real Daddy.'"

 

"You didn't quite answer me, ma'am."

 

She still hadn't admitted to being Dana Scully or to knowing Mulder. And Skinner didn't understand why this woman had an empty FBI file referring him to another file so top-secret he didn't know of its existence. He did some poking around a few months ago, and she wasn't a spy or secret agent. Dana Scully didn't travel overseas or consort with anyone questionable. She paid her taxes, went to Mass every week, and was held in high regard by the doctors at the hospital and by her professors - which said something for a young woman in medical school. She was a bright, ambitious young Army nurse who had a child out of wedlock. Aside from that and her relationship with Mulder, nothing about her life or her family seemed questionable - or even unusual.

 

Watching Dana with Emily, Skinner found it out of character for her to have aborted Mulder's child or to conceal this one from him. Or, even if Mulder wasn't interested in this baby, Skinner couldn't see Mulder refusing to support it. The story - a tempestuous romance between a young woman with questionable morals and a wealthy ball player who had his fun and moved on - didn't ring true. It reminded him of a play with poorly cast leads: still an interesting story, but he didn't buy the actors in their roles.

 

He paused to adjust his glasses, trying to remember all of Dales' nonsensical theories about aliens and experiments and Dana Scully. Skinner hadn't been listening; Dales had so many nonsensical theories they all blended together.

 

This was the kind of case Skinner would like Fox Mulder's opinion on.

 

"You're afraid of something," Skinner said, trying to sound trustworthy. "I understand, and I will do everything in my power to protect you and your daughter. And your baby. But I need you to be honest with me. I need to know what's happening. I need to know about the film Mulder brought me. I need to know where he got it. Or, or where you got it," he added, considering the possibility for the first time.

 

She looked at him with her eyes giving away nothing.

 

"I can keep you safe, Miss Scully."

 

The patrol car rolled past the bakery again. She turned her head, watching it with a hand on her belly.

 

"Do you think so?" she asked evenly, and Skinner swallowed.

 

Dana slid put of the booth, stood awkwardly, and jostled Emily's shoulder to wake her.

 

"We aren't finished here," he said in his stern voice.

 

"I think we are," she answered, managing not to cower in fear.

 

Emily mumbled for her mother to carry her.

 

"I can't, honey. Mommy can't. You have to walk." 

 

"Can't; hurts," Emily muttered. She raised her head sleepily. Two dark red streams trickled from her nose. The trickle become heavier until blood flowed over her mouth and chin.

 

"Uh-oh." Dana grabbed a paper napkin and pinched her daughter's nose shut. "Tilt your head back."

 

Emily complied. Not knowing what else to do, Skinner retrieved more napkins. "Is she all right?"

 

Dana stroked Emily's hair. "Fine. Just sprung a leak, right?" she said gently.

 

He heard choking sounds. Emily leaned forward, struggling to breathe. She coughed, spraying crimson blood everywhere. She looked to her mother and she started to cry.

 

"Shush, shush, shush. It’s a nosebleed. A leak. No shots. No more doctors," Dana assured her, and moped up the mess.

 

"I wan' Mul'er," Emily pleaded nasally. "I wan' my real 'tory. I wan' go home."

 

"We can't go home. It's not safe." Dana squatted in front of the girl. Dana tried to wipe off the blood, but mostly smeared it. 

 

Skinner offered another little paper napkin. Remembering the handkerchief in his pocket, he passed it to Dana as well.

 

"It's stopping. It's stopping," Dana assured Emily, and gave her the clean handkerchief to hold under her nose. "All over. Let's put some ice on it, make it feel better."

 

She leaned forward to pick up her daughter, but Skinner stopped her. He held out his hands. Dana nodded, so he picked up Emily and followed her mother through the dark bakery and up the frozen stairs to her apartment.

 

The interior wasn't what he expected. An unwed mother on a waitress's salary - he expected poverty, but saw no sign of it. The apartment looked sparse but comfortable. The radiator kept the rooms warmer than he found comfortable, and warmer than most poor families could afford during the Oregon winter. He noted little amenities: a new toaster, a blender, a radio, and television set. Emily's thick coat and well-made saddle shoes. A basket of oranges in the kitchen in December. Dana Scully afforded the things she wanted, and she wasn't doing it waiting tables in a truck stop.

 

Maybe Mulder wrote her a big check and told her to get out of town when he found out about the baby – which didn't sound like Mulder. Or she left him – which didn't sound like Dana Scully. Or explain her living on the other side of the country under an assumed name. Or wearing a cheap wedding band on her finger and an expensive engagement ring on her necklace. Or why Mulder hadn’t moved Heaven and Earth to find Dana, her daughter, and his baby. No matter how Skinner did the math, it didn't add up.

 

His eyes stopped on an open, half-filled suitcase on the bed at the end of the hall. Dana had been packing when he knocked on the door.

 

"Put her on the sofa," Dana requested, heading for the kitchen. Skinner set Emily down. He heard the freezer door open and close. Water ran, a cabinet door banged, and metal pots clanged. "Ice," Dana said, returning. She passed a cube-filled dishtowel to him. "A washcloth. And a bowl."

 

"What's the bowl for?" he said as Emily leaned forward, vomiting blood into the metal mixing bowel. She must have swallowed it as she choked. What had been a little going down looked like a lot coming back up. "Is she all right?" he asked.

 

"Fine." Dana set the bowl aside and wiped her daughter's face with a wet washcloth. "We're fine. Aren't we?" she added, like she tried to convince herself as well.

 

Emily nodded unconvincingly. Her lower lip trembled.

 

Dana wiped away the last smears of blood and reached for the ice pack. "It's all over. Close your eyes, honey."

 

"I wanna go home," Emily pleaded. "I want Mulder and Will."

 

"Honey, we can't."

 

"Why can't you?" Skinner asked softly. He spoke the way he reasoned with Sharon if she got upset with herself over burning toast or forgetting to fix a button on his shirt. "Why can't she call him? It's a telephone call."

 

"You aren't helping," Dana hissed through her teeth, and he stepped back. "We can't call him, honey. You know why. It's too dangerous. Dangerous for us and dangerous for them."

 

"Grammy?"

 

"No, we can't call Grammy, either."

 

Emily's face crumpled, and she started to cry tiredly. Dana sat on the sofa beside her. She put her arms around her daughter. 

 

Skinner reached for the telephone on the end table. He dialed the FBI switchboard. "This is AD Skinner. I need a secure line out," he told the operator, and handed the receiver to Dana. "Tell her to put you through to whoever you like."

 

She took the receiver, staring at it.

 

"It's secure," he assured her. "No one's listening. The call will look like it originated from the FBI in Washington."

 

Emily stopped crying and watched expectantly.

 

Dana put the receiver to her ear and said shakily. "New York City, please. The Plaza Hotel." There was a paused, and Dana nodded again. "Fox Mulder, please." She bit her lip. She held the phone with one hand and rubbed Emily's back with her other as she listened. "William Mulder?" Another pause. "No, no message. Thank you," she said softly. She handed the receiver back to Skinner.

 

"They're not there?"

 

She shook her head. Emily curled into a ball again, sobbing miserably and mumbling about doctors.

 

"Try the house in Georgetown."

 

Dana shook her head again.

 

"I can locate him. Give me ten minutes." Skinner didn’t exaggerate. Fox Mulder signed for one more season with the Yankees, and the sports world buzzed. His photo was everywhere - in the papers, in magazine ads. At charity galas in New York and opening a new hospital wing in Boston. His voice advertised Cadillac automobiles and Morley cigarettes on the radio. Mulder couldn’t have hidden if he’d tried – and he didn’t seem to be trying. In fact, for a famous baseball player, Mulder had been reclusive until the last few months. Three calls. Between the society editor at The New York Times, the manager at The Plaza, and Mulder’s press agent, Skinner could have a G-man put a telephone in Mulder’s hand within ten minutes.

 

Skinner started to dial the FBI switchboard again. Dana put her hand on his, stopping him.

 

"I know Mulder,” Skinner insisted. “I know the kind of man he is. Whatever has happened, as soon as he knows about this baby, he'll be here within hours," he assured her. "If you need him, he'll be here. Don't you know he loves you?"

 

Dana looked at her tearful daughter, at the phone, and down at her belly. She bit her lower lip. As Skinner watched, trying to figure out what else to say or do, Dana covered her face with her hand and began to cry silently.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Skinner rose early, but only in self-defense. If he arrived at the office by seven, he might wade through the meetings and paperwork to be home by seven at night. That meant getting up around five, and Sharon long since stopped making him breakfast. On the rare weekends Skinner was home, he got up at eight and she cooked. Weekdays, Sharon set out English muffins or coffee cake before she went to bed.

 

Skinner wrapped his fingers around the top of the doorjamb and stretched.  The sun wasn't up yet, and cool dew covered the yard. Alexandria remained silent. He scratched his chest and yawned, getting ready to meet a long day. Every other house on the street had a newspaper on the porch, but Skinner’s paper waited smugly in the center of the wet front lawn. Every damn morning.

 

It's a conspiracy, Skinner told himself. He squished barefooted across the grass, getting the hems of his pajama bottoms wet.

 

Across the street, a car door opened. Skinner looked up. Nothing had happened since the smoking man caught him talking to Mulder at The Plaza, but he imagined he felt it coming like an approaching storm.

 

Fox Mulder emerged hurriedly from a new, black Chrysler. Mulder carried a small metal canister and a pistol. Mulder tucked the pistol into the waistband of his trousers. William sat in the driver's seat. The boy watched nervously as his father approached the house. 

 

"Mulder?" Skinner managed.

 

"I'm sorry. I was afraid to go to your office," Mulder said quickly.

 

Skinner didn't bother to ask how Mulder discovered his home address. "Is something wrong? Has something happened?"

 

"I need your help. Will you help us?" He held a film canister.

 

"Of course. Of course I will. Come inside."

 

Mulder turned back to the car. He nodded curtly; his son nodded back. Mulder had a dangerous air about him, like a lion when his pride was threatened or a soldier if the enemy struck too close to home.

 

Feeling naked in his T-shirt and pajama bottoms, Skinner picked up his own handgun from the table beside the front door. He carried it to the kitchen in case the bad guys lurked in the pantry.

 

"I need you to take this to the smoking man." Mulder handed Skinner the canister of film and sounded like he'd rehearsed his words. "Tell him I want to make a deal. Tell him there are copies, and if anything happens to Dana or Emily Scully, or to Will, or me, this film will play on the evening news. Can you do that? Do you know how to contact him?"

 

"I have a pretty good idea. Mulder, slow down and tell me what's happened. What is this? Where did you get it?"

 

"It doesn't matter. Tell him. If anything happens to them. Or us." He gestured to the car outside. "Anything. You'll do that?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Thank you," Mulder responded. He turned toward the front door. "Will and I will be away for a few days. A few weeks, maybe. I'll call you."

 

"If you think you're in danger, I can take you into protective custody. Let me get dressed and-"

 

"Last year, They tried to kill me. Yesterday morning, They pointed a gun at my son's head. My phone's tapped. My friend's phones are tapped. Someone searched my apartment at The Plaza, looking for that film. Forgive me, but you can't even come close to keeping us safe, Assistant Director. Please just make the deal."

 

"Mulder," Skinner called after Mulder, following him. "These men are the major league. What is this film you think They're going to make a deal?"

 

"It's Pandora's box," Mulder answered and repeated, "Thank you," as he walked out.

 

Skinner stayed at his heels. "What about Dana and Emily? You said you and your son would be away. What about Dana and Emily Scully? Where are they? Are they safe?"

 

Mulder hesitated. “I-I don't know."

 

"You don't know?" Skinner talked to the back of Mulder's head as Mulder jogged across the street. Mulder got in the passenger side. Will started the engine and pulled away from the curb.

 

Skinner stared at the car as it drove away, and at the film canister. It gave no clue as to what might be inside except the label: 'Roswell, New Mexico 1947: Project Blue Book'.

 

Still barefooted, Skinner trudged to the basement and reached up to turn on the bare light bulb. It took him a few minutes to find their old projector. He opened the canister and threaded the film through the machine. He found an extension cord, plugged the projector in, pointed it at a dark, bare wall, and flipped the switch.

 

He leaned on his workbench, squinting uncertainly as he watched doctors examine a creature on a table, seeming to be conducting an autopsy. Halfway through, Skinner stopped and rewound the film, watching it again. He knew what it looked like he saw, and what he couldn't possibly see, and his mind struggled with all the possibilities between the two extremes.

 

He knew there was a base near Roswell, New Mexico, and Project Blue Book was a top-secret military aircraft project based in the Nevada desert. In 1947, the Air Force claimed to retrieve a UFO near Roswell but amended that, saying they found a weather balloon. Either the government lied and it had been a UFO – and Skinner watched a film of an alien being autopsied - or it was a hoax created by the government to cover up something larger. Either way, Mulder was right. The grainy, flickering film stock was Pandora's box.

 

*~*~*~* 

 

Skinner remembered Dana offering him a bottle of Aspirin and a glass of water.

 

She'd said her head ached and gone to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. As he watched, she poured two white tablets from the bottle and swallowed them. Dana turned toward him and raised the open bottle questioningly. Skinner, temples throbbing but not a fool, nodded. She shook two more identical pills out of the Aspirin bottle and onto his hand. The glass of water came directly from the tap and hadn't tasted odd or metallic.

 

But he didn't remember falling asleep. He carried Emily to bed for Dana, and returned to the living room. She agreed to pack her things and let him take her and the girl into protective custody - at least temporarily, until he could figure out what was happening. Until he could talk with Mulder in the morning and straighten everything out. The next thing Skinner remembered was waking at dawn, sprawled on an armchair in her apartment. The taste in his mouth indicated he'd been snoring, and his neck felt stiff on one side.

 

Skinner looked around, expecting Dana to be nearby. He didn’t see her. The radio played the local news, the radiator rumbled its warm belly, and the basket of oranges still sat on the kitchen counter. He pushed up from the chair and looked around the apartment. Emily's bed was vacant, and the blanket and pillow gone. The crayon drawings and worksheets that had hung on the refrigerator were gone as well. Dana's waitress uniforms still hung in the wardrobe, pressed and ready to be worn. Her robe hung on the back of the bathroom door, but the suitcase was gone from the bed. She left a pair of her shoes and Emily's toys, but cleared out a shelf of the medicine cabinet. A few dresser drawers were also empty, but he couldn't tell what had been in them. On a little wooden rack in the bathroom – the kind Sharon used to hang her stockings and brassieres and lacy underthings after handwashing them in the sink – Skinner found the handkerchief he’d given Dana the previous night. The white fabric was damp but no longer stained with Emily’s blood.

 

Skinner stumbled outside and squinted at the weak winter sun. The bakery was busy, as was the hardware store beside it. His head felt groggy, and he shook it to clear it.

 

Those must have been some Aspirin.

 

No one in Bellefleur knew where Laura might have gone or where she'd come from. Laura Samuels and her daughter Katie had been in town a few months. They were friendly but kept to themselves. The school still waited for Katie's records to arrive, but said she was a bright little girl, though ill. Laura had no checking account, no library card, and no post office box. The diner paid Laura in cash. She paid her rent and utility bills in cash. Big bills sometimes, her landlord, the bakery owner remembered. Her boss at the diner had a theory she was running from her husband and confided in Skinner Laura would have a baby in a few more months. Her boss said he had a sister who'd gotten herself in the same fix - a baby on the way and a deadbeat husband drinking and slapping her around. The diner owner didn't tell Skinner how things turned out for the sister, but did say he wished Laura Samuels luck.

 

Skinner started toward to deputy sheriff's office, debating about having an All-points Bulletin put out on them. A pregnant redhead and a sick little girl shouldn't be hard to locate, and Dana had pulled a sleight of hand and given him something besides Aspirin. That had to be some crime: annoying a Federal Agent.

 

The radio in her apartment was on last night so she could hear if he put out an APB after she left the hospital. At that realization, he stopped walking toward the sheriff’s office.

 

Not sure what to do, Skinner returned to her apartment, checking for some clue where she might have gone. There wasn't one, but he hadn't expected there to be. Whoever coached her did a good job - better than many FBI agents - and she listened. Skinner could turn the place inside out but he’d find no ties to her old life. No photographs, no letters, not even a newspaper article about Mulder. Skinner would have advised her not to change their first names or initials unless she had to, so he assumed this wasn't their first new identity. Spies were told to assume a quiet, simple, likable persona, exactly what Dana Scully had done. Making up too many details about the past risked getting confused and giving yourself away. Undercover agents were told to live what they knew, and Dana knew how to be a hard-working unwed mother. Except she wasn't. Most of the money would be someplace else. Accessible, but not local. Some in cash, some in bearer bonds, some in a numbered Swiss account. She'd have a reliable, nondescript car with a bag hidden in the trunk: new passports, birth certificates, a change of clothes, whatever she needed to quickly change their appearance. She could open the bag and instantly become someone else.

 

The only mistake she'd made in months was bringing Skinner a fresh cup of coffee yesterday morning.

 

Skinner wondered if Dana had a reason to return to her apartment last night besides, if he came after her, to drug or otherwise disable him and buy herself more time to escape. If she was one of his agents, he'd advise her to head north to Canada - over the border and out of reach of the U.S. government. Same language, sparse population, harsh winter: a good place to hole up and wait for her baby to come. And whatever came after that.

 

Skinner wished he knew what the hell was on that Blue Book film or where Dana got it. Or what made Dana Scully and her daughter special to anyone except Fox Mulder The Baseball Player. He didn't, though, and whatever Dana ran from, he couldn't help her. Skinner couldn't protect her, her daughter, or her baby, and he didn't even know who or what he'd be protecting her from. In fact, he’d placed her in far more danger than she ever placed herself. The best thing Skinner could do was let her run.

 

He pulled a chair from the kitchen table, turned it around, and sat down heavily at the edge of the abandoned living room. Reaching for the telephone, he asked the operator to connect him to Alexandria. After a dozen rings, he was rewarded with Sharon's sleepy, "Hello?"

 

"Hi," he said softly.

 

"Walter? What time is it? Where are you?"

 

"Early. Oregon."

 

He heard her yawn. "Still in Oregon?"

 

"Why don't you fly out, Sharon? It's beautiful."

 

"Fly out?"

 

"Get on an airplane. I'll explain once you get here."

 

She hesitated. "Walter, what is it? You sound different."

 

He looked around Dana's apartment. "I'm done with the Bureau. Whatever they're doing, I don't want to be a part of it."

 

She laughed nervously but stopped. "You mean it this time, don't you?"

 

"I mean it. I'm finding a motel, and my next call is to Hoover. Get up, pack a bag, and get on a plane to Portland. I'll find a car and meet you there."

 

"Portland. That's west of Middle-of-Nowhere, isn't it?"

 

"No, Portland's the social hub of Oregon, City Girl. Where I am: I'm west of Middle-of-Nowhere. There's a store across the street selling flannel and one next door selling axes."

 

"Walter..." she mumbled in disbelief.

 

"I'll be at the airport. I love you, Sharon."

 

"I love you," she answered quickly. 

 

She didn't hear that enough these days. For the last few years, she hadn't heard much besides Skinner telling her he wouldn’t be home for dinner (or the weekend, or Easter, or Christmas). If he was home, and she asked what was on his mind, she heard “It's work; you know I can't talk about it.”

 

"I'll have to find my dungarees," she said. "I think I still own a pair. My manicurist will be horrified. I'm telling her this is your idea. Do you want me to pack anything for you? Long underwear? Skis? Should I bring the skis?"

 

Skinner thought a few seconds. "Would you bring my boat?"

 

"I don't think I’ll have room in my suitcases once I pack your barbecue grill, all your tools, and the backyard pool."

 

"We could sail it here," he suggested. "I'll have to go back to D.C. to wrap things up at the Bureau. We could sail back to Oregon."

 

"The mid-west, Walter."

 

He laughed softly and reminded her, "The Panama Canal, Sharon. I mean sail the long way around."

 

She sighed, sounding amused. "I'm packing all our worldly belongings, a bottle of good wine, and getting on a plane. We'll figure things out over dinner."

 

"That sounds perfect," he assured her as he noticed the deputy sheriff's car rolling to a stop in front of the bakery.

 

"Assistant Director," the sheriff called as Skinner descended the frozen wooden steps from Dana’s apartment. "Folks said you were asking about Laura Samuels. Is she in trouble?"

 

"No." Skinner shook his head. "She's not in any trouble."

 

"Can't see why she would be. Is she at home?"

 

"No," he repeated. He buttoned up his overcoat. "She's not here."

 

The deputy chewed his toothpick. "Laura's a pretty girl, if you look at her. Made a few mistakes, but haven't we all? There were some government men out here last week, asking folks about her, like you."

 

"From which agency?"

 

"They never said. Arrogant fellows. Vague but used to pushing people around." The pot-bellied deputy glanced at Dana Scully's closed apartment door and looked at Skinner again. "Don't care for men like that. They came all the way from New York City wanting to know if Laura Samuels was who she claimed."

 

"You don't say," Skinner supplied, familiar with the 'aw, shucks' method of rural interrogation.

 

The deputy adjusted his hat and put his hands in his coat pockets. "Are you a baseball fan, Mr. Skinner?"

 

"Isn't everyone?"

 

"The New York Yankees, there's a team. A class act. Never seen them play, but I listen to every game and I read the sports page. My wife - she clips things about the players out of the society section and from magazines for me. I can tell you which starlet they're dating, where they're vacationing, all their kid's names. I keep a scrapbook, and I got the one subscription to the Sunday New York Times for two hundred miles around. My wife says I'm worse than a twelve-year-old boy about the team."

 

"Is that so?" Skinner said casually. "I like the Yankees. I've taken my father to a few games in Washington. We watch our Senators get their asses handed to them. I've met the Yankees’ centerfielder. The one who was shot last year. What's his name?"

 

"Fox Mulder," the deputy supplied reverently. "'Poetry in motion,' the paper says.

 

"He's as down-to-Earth a fellow as you'd ever want to meet. He's a regular guy who plays baseball for a living. With a mansion in Georgetown, a Fifth Avenue penthouse, and a German sports car I'd love to get my hands on for an afternoon," Skinner added.

 

"I read he's playing next season, and he's marrying that nurse who saved his life: Dana Scully. Pretty lady, with a sweet little girl; I got a photo the papers ran after he was shot. I guess there's some resemblance, but I can't imagine how anyone would mistake our Laura and Katie for those two." The deputy removed his toothpick and held it a foot from his mouth as he spoke. "I told those New York fools I'd known Laura Samuels all my life. She went to school with my baby brother, married my wife's cousin, and lost him this past summer. Hunting accident. One stray bullet and Laura and little Katie are on their own again. Insurance company said he killed himself, but no one around here believes it. Still, insurance company won't pay. I got the autopsy report. I showed it to the New York men. Showed them her late husband's tombstone. I can show both to you, Assistant Director. No trouble at all."

 

"That won't be necessary." Skinner assured him. "As I said, she hasn't done anything wrong."

 

The next block over, a tractor-trailer's engine roared briefly as the driver downshifted. The brakes squealed and the tires crunched slowly across the gravel lot beside the diner.

 

"He stutters - Fox Mulder does," Skinner said. "It's not bad, but I think he's self-conscious about it. If you'll listen to his interviews, he doesn't say much. A few scripted phrases. His agent answers for him. It's not because he's stupid - quite the opposite. It's because he stutters."

 

"I didn't know. I got a nephew who stutters. Little guys hates it. We keep hoping he'll grow out of it."

 

Skinner leaned back against the deputy's aged squad car. "You know she's not at home, Deputy. Last week, you told her strangers were asking about her, and you wanted to know why. Everybody makes mistakes, but you don't want any trouble in your town. She gave you a plausible answer: her husband's a drunk or ran off with someone else or died in Korea. But like you said, she's a memorably pretty woman. You went home and checked your scrapbook. Not your business, you told yourself, but you've been keeping an eye on her. And she knew you knew. I showed up. You're the one who picked her up from the hospital, and you know she's not at home because you saw her leave town in the middle of the night. You didn't ask where she's going, but you wish her luck. What you showed the men from New York last week was the autopsy report of a drifter who shot himself in the woods outside of town. Maybe the last name was a coincidence or she listened to local gossip for a week or so and chose 'Samuels.' Either way, if I go back to that diner and ask her boss, he's not going to tell me Laura Samuels is a local widow with a checkered past."

 

The deputy squinted at him. "I'm not clear what you're wanting, Mr. Skinner."

 

This might be the last thing he did as an Assistant Director of the FBI. In a few minutes, Skinner would call Hoover and say he was retiring. There would be paperwork and meetings, but this could be his last time in the field. Twenty-five years with the Bureau, a decade with the U.S. Marshals before that, and the military before that: this was the last time the decision about how to protect innocent people from the evil in the world rested solely on him.

 

"I want you to make sure, if more government men come asking, everyone's story matches," Skinner told the deputy. "It's a small town, and people talk, so make sure they're all talking about the same thing. Your story is a good one but has too many loose ends. Her story is better and it's harder to check. She's a smart woman. Stick with her story."

 

The deputy nodded. "You're the FBI man." He exhaled. His breath made a white cloud in front of his face. He said in the same easy, we-got-all-day manner, "Seems odd a man wouldn't marry a girl in trouble if they're engaged. It's been in the newspaper and everything. My wife and me - we got married quicker than we first planned, but no harm done. I know big city folks are different, but it- It don't sound like him."

 

"The mob." Skinner spoke as if telling a secret. "There's big money in gambling on professional baseball. Some players - some teams, even - will agree to shave a few runs. It's not common, but it happens. If a player won't go along, though – if he can't be bought or blackmailed, they can't break his knee to get him to cooperate. The best way to control an honest athlete is to threaten his family. We'll put the mobsters behind bars sooner or later, and we try our best to protect everyone, but I understand a man not wanting to risk his family in the meantime." He paused. "With a baby coming, I'd be surprised if he hasn't married her and they're keeping it quiet. That, to me, sounds like him."

 

They watched the gray horizon together as another truck rolled in, its engine rumbling, brakes complaining. The diner was filling up.

 

"It's nice when our heroes turn out to be the men we think they are," Skinner said more to himself than the deputy. "It's the way it should be."

 

"It is. You're right. But damn it, she was the best waitress that place has had in ten years," the deputy said.

 

*~*~*~*

 

End: A Moment in the Sun: Bellefleur

 

A Moment in the Sun: Normandy

 

*~*~*~*

 

John Byers had never been with any other woman. He didn't think of himself as naïve or prudish; he’d thought he’d know when it was right. And he had.

 

He'd been twenty-six years old, standing outside a Wiltshire pub with Fox Mulder, waiting for World War II to get back on track, as she walked by: a beautiful, blond-haired, blue-eyed Polish Jew. She had a fragility and loneliness about her, like a spider's silk thread adrift on the wind. She dropped her packages. He rushed to help. By the time they established in broken English she was Susanne Modeski and he was Captain John Byers, he’d fallen in love. They married thirty-six hours later.

 

In thirteen years, Byers never regretted it. If Susanne ever regretted her rash decision to marry a Virginia farm boy, fresh out of law school, unlicensed, and about to board a ship bound for D-Day, it never showed. They had the American dream. Byers was a senior partner at the firm, Susanne raised their twin girls, and they vacationed in Aspen. Dinner arrived on the table as he arrived home, except on Thursdays. Thursdays, the girls had piano lessons. He worked late and met Susanne, Ana, and Katy for spaghetti and meatballs at a bistro a few blocks from his office.

 

It was idyllic. Everything Byers ever wanted. Everything he wanted to believe life should be. Too perfect to be true.

 

Byers knew what he saw last spring. One minute, Alex Krycek pointed a sawed-off shotgun at Mulder. Mulder fired four shots. Alex Krycek's body lay on the pavement with half his head missing; three other men lay dead in the shadows. Within seconds, nothing remained of any of the bodies except the weapons, a Rolex watch, and some scraps of leather.

 

The day Mulder shot four men who weren’t men, and Dana and Emily went into hiding, Byers went home, still shaking, and took his telephone apart. He found a small electronic listening device hidden inside it. Susanne returned from the grocery store in time to hear their bedroom mirror shatter. She found Byers staring at the tiny hole in the wall behind it. Behind the hole, he discovered a camera.

 

That was Tuesday, May 31, 1955. That day, the Supreme Court ordered school desegregation should begin "with all due speed." RCA introduced color television. Salk's polio vaccine was deemed safe and effective. “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” played on the radio and "The Seven Year Itch" showed in theaters. John Byers woke from the American dream. 

 

He told Susanne it was the mob. He'd unknowingly represented a client who had dangerous enemies, and those enemies had no qualms about spying on or harming his family.

 

In a way, he told the truth.

 

Their new home was a weathered stone cottage with enough space the girls had their own bedrooms, with a few to spare. They had a big, old-fashioned kitchen, a dusty basement and a wine cellar, and a stuffy attic. The house came with a pond, a meadow, a garden, a meandering path through the woods, and the entire coast of Normandy, France for a backyard.

 

Paris was two and a half hours away. They could board an overnight train at dusk in Bayeux, sleep as it glided through Berlin, and meet Susanne's mother in Warsaw the next morning. They didn’t need a nanny or housekeeper, and their neighbors were farmers, fishermen, and dairymen: friendly, country, French people. So far, Byers hadn't seen any of them dissolve into green puddles.

 

Life was quiet. As Mulder said, it felt almost safe.

 

Byers traveled to Manhattan about once a month, but for all practical purposes, he was Of Counsel status with the firm. His name remained on the letterhead, but his role was consulting. He planted an orchard, painted a shed, and wrote long letters to old friends. He checked for microphones and cameras once a week, listening to his wife's sighs as he took the radio, television, and telephone apart yet again. As the summer of 1956 faded in yellow and orange splendor, he peeled and cored bushels of apples for Susanne as she tried making jelly and apple butter. He reread the classic novels, discovering new meaning in his favorite passages. He walked on the beach, examining the rusting remnants of the Allied invasion a decade earlier. He found himself looking across the Atlantic Ocean at dusk, watching the waves and wondering who or what out there watched back.

 

There was a flowerbox outside the kitchen window. Susanne gave it a teacup of water, closed the window, and turned back to the stove as the kettle began to whistle. She still wore her robe, and she hummed a lullaby he'd heard her sing to the girls when they were small. 

 

The faces across from him at the breakfast table could have been Susanne at eleven years-old. Ana and Katy had their mother's features and fair coloring along with the slim coltishness of early adolescence. Today, Katy had a ponytail, but that was the only difference. The girls didn't dress alike so much as they followed the dress code of their generation: blue jeans, bobby socks, saddle shoes, cardigans and, as Byers looked closer, his white dress shirts. He'd wondered what happened to all his shirts; his daughters had confiscated them.

 

"I don't think you can wear that," he commented neutrally, and thanked Susanne as she filled his teacup. The teabag blushed ginger, and steam rose from the surface of the water, swirling lazily. 

 

"We asked. Mother said it was all right," Katy responded for both of them.

 

Susanne explained over her shoulder, "They are old shirts, John," with her words marked by the strong consonants and even tempo of her homeland.

 

"No, I don't mind the shirts. Schools have rules about girls wearing trousers to school."

 

"But we're not going to school," Ana explained while her sister chewed.

 

"You're not going to school?" Byers put down his teacup, concerned. "Of course you are. You have to go to school. Education is important. If I'm going to drive you, you'll have to hurry. I need to meet Mulder and Dana at the station in-" He checked the clock. "An hour."

 

Both girls blinked at him in confusion.

 

"Hurry," he repeated gently. He took one last sip of his tea, set the cup aside, and stood. "Go change your clothes, girls."

 

His daughters started to get up.

 

"It is Saturday, John," Susanne reminded him softly.

 

"Saturday?"

 

Ana and Katy nodded in agreement, two identical blond heads moving in unison.

 

"Oh," he responded. He'd lost track of the days. He knew Mulder's train arrived from Paris on October 27th, but he hadn't realized that was a Saturday.

 

The girls sat down to finish their breakfast. He glanced up at Susanne sheepishly, and she smiled and ruffled his hair. He smoothed it back into place and picked up his teacup again.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Not being a sports fan, Byers had been the one soldier in the Allied Army not star struck by Fox Mulder. To Byers, Mulder was the guy in the chow line who liked cream and sugar in his coffee, and ketchup on everything else. Byers remembered Mulder being a good shot and a good soldier. Mulder couldn't follow a map, but he recalled every bit of information on it. He was bright, with a good head for numbers and an ear for languages. Mulder got seasick. Homesick. And Mulder had a son named William.

 

It took a year and several overheard telephone calls for Byers to realize William wasn't the toddler in Mulder's photos. Mulder's marriage had hit the rocks, and his wife and son lived in war-ravaged London, not New York. Mulder also initially neglected to mention three of the bodies they found in the German concentration camp were his Jewish relatives. At the tail end of the war, Byers realized what happened as Mulder looked down his rifle at the enemy; his mother’s family vanished into Nazi Germany, and Hitler's army encroached on his wife and son in Great Britain.

 

Rule number one about Fox Mulder: he was a nice guy, but threaten his family and he'd kill without a second thought.

 

If they met for the first time now, Mulder wouldn't say he’d finished his 13th and final season with the Yankees, including an astounding 10th World Series victory and tying Babe Ruth's homerun record. He wouldn't talk about the war or attending Oxford or consulting for the F.B.I. He'd say he was Dana's husband, a father, and about to be a grandfather. If they talked late at night and Mulder felt wistful, he might say he was Samantha's big brother.

 

As Byers parked beside the train station, he spotted Emily on Mulder's shoulders. Her hooded head bobbed above the rolling steam and the crowd of arriving passengers. Dana had Benjamin, though it looked like she held a bundle of blue blankets with a hat on top. The baby opened his mouth for a Cheerio from the Tupperware cup Mulder held, explored it with his tongue, and considered it thoughtfully before spitting it out.

 

"Mulder!" Byers raised his hand as he waded through the stream of passengers.

 

Mulder turned and waved. He said something to Dana, who waved as well, smiling. A few passengers watched them, admiring the pretty picture: the petite, fashionably slim redhead in her tailored suit, and the tall, handsome, athletic-looking man beside her. He was protective; she was lovely; their children were beautiful. An affluent American family vacationing in the north of France.

 

The autumn afternoons were warm, but the mornings remained cool and wet, and the breeze off the ocean carried a chill. Dana pulled a blanket around the baby's head. She had Mulder stoop so she could tighten Emily's hood before they followed the porter. Behind her mother, secure on Mulder's shoulders, Emily surreptitiously loosened the drawstring again.

 

"My God, you kept the Studebaker," Mulder said as Byers opened the back of the station wagon for the porter. "How did you justify putting that on a boat and shipping it to Europe?"

 

"Studebakers have a long-standing reputation for reliability and-" Byers realized he was being teased. He grinned self-consciously.

 

Mulder gave him a tired, lopsided smile. Instead of a hug or handshake, he offered a Cheerio, rattling the cup enticingly. "They're nummy-nummy," he promised.

 

The wind ruffled his hair and whipped the sleeves of his jacket like the sails of a ship. Up close, in the morning sun, the stubble on his jaw had flecks of gray. Byers saw fine lines around Mulder's eyes. Up close, Mulder looked less like a legend and more like a tired hero.

 

"How are you?" Byers asked as everyone got in the station wagon. Dana sat in the back seat with Emily and Mulder sat in the front, holding Ben.

 

"Fine," Mulder answered, but glanced back at Dana. "Are we fine?" She must have nodded, because Mulder sounded more certain as he said, "We're fine." 

 

*~*~*~*

 

There was no good way to cross the Atlantic with a nine-month-old and a just-turned-seven-year-old. The flight took twelve hours between New York and London by jetliner, and on to Paris, where they landed long before the sun rose. Luckily, Dana said Emily and Ben slept the whole way, waking as they boarded the train north to Normandy.

 

The children had slept; the grownups had not. Mulder and Dana were nodding off during the drive from the train station to Byers' home. Dana unpacked and laid down for a ten-minute catnap that turned into four hours. After getting the kids settled in, Mulder joined her. The girls were having a good time showing off their toys and fussing over Emily, which left Susanne to fuss over Benjamin. 

 

"He is such a good boy," she marveled, carrying Ben into the living room.

 

"I think he's Daddy's boy, aren't you?" Byers put his book aside. "Are you Daddy's boy?"

 

From Susanne's arms, Ben regarded them with his clear blue eyes. He was a quiet, contemplative child with Mulder's dark hair and Dana's fair skin, quite pretty to be a boy. Mulder said Ben could walk, though Byers didn't see how; Ben's feet never touched the ground with his father present. Byers rarely saw Dana get to touch her son unless Ben needed a diaper change.

 

Susanne sat in the old rocking chair and draped a blanket over the baby. Ben nuzzled against her breast. She stroked the fine hair on his head and patted his back in time with a sad, exotic lullaby.

 

Byers leaned forward, watching as she rocked Ben. To his surprise, after he told her the Mulders would be visiting, the girls' baby accouterments reappeared from the attic: a rocker, a highchair, a crib, a wooden playpen, and boxes of toys, bibs, diapers, and clothes. Byers hadn't realized Susanne still had all of it, let alone had moved it across an ocean. They'd talked about more children - especially a boy - but in twelve years there hadn't even been a false alarm.

 

"Don't get too attached; I don't think Mulder's going to let you keep him," he said quietly.

 

"He is such a good little boy," she repeated softly in her movie-star Polish accent, seeming uncomfortable with his scrutiny. "That is all. It makes me think. The girls are growing up. During the day, the house seems so quiet. But it is not going to happen, is it?"

 

The rocker creaked against the wooden floor. A pot on the stove in the kitchen gurgled. Byers heard a fit of giggles upstairs, and 'shushes' from Ana's bedroom.

 

"Susanne, we haven't been trying. Not in a long time."

 

"We have not been not trying, either, John."

 

He and Susanne were almost forty; statistically, they should be becoming grandparents, not parents again. Susanne was expecting when he returned from World War II, so except for a few dreamlike nights in Wiltshire and Paris during the war, they'd been parents their entire marriage. He barely separated the two. He thought of 'Susanne and the girls,' seldom just 'Susanne.'

 

Ben kept patting her breast, looking less contented.

 

"Hast du Hunger, Benjamin?" Susanne asked him softly, looking wistful. She said to Byers, "John, should we feed him something?"

 

The door of the guestroom opened. Mulder ambled out in his T-shirt and wrinkled trousers. He shrugged his shirt on and scratched the back of his head. His face was creased from the pillow and his hair flattened on one side.

 

Byers leaned back, Ben reached up, and Susanne stood, guiltily offering the baby to Mulder's outstretched hands.

 

Mulder looked at them blearily. "Get your own," he mumbled as he carried his son back to bed. As the door closed, Byers saw him hand the baby off to Dana, who was unbuttoning her blouse.

 

*~*~*~*

 

“We made it, but we were damaged in route.”

 

Mulder had said it with a half-smile and his usual dry, self-deprecating wit: simple words from the heart of a complicated man.

 

Mulder’s contract required finishing the season with the Yankees, which meant being on the road for weeks. Dana stayed in the Hudson Valley with Ben and Emily, away from prying eyes and taking some time to adjust after a year in hiding. Mulder would talk about Will and Maddie for hours, but whenever Byers asked how Dana and Emily were, Mulder said “better,” and changed the subject.

 

“We were damaged in route.” If Mulder wanted to specify further, he would. There was no use asking.

 

The shower adjoining the guestroom ran once, for a long time. Two clean people emerged, looking flushed. Dana changed into a skirt and sweater, and her damp hair began to curl as it dried. Mulder wore his favorite gray flannel shirt: a collection of patches, stains, and mended places rather than a garment. His blue jeans sat low on his hips, and he ran his fingers through his hair, getting it as neat as ever. He still had the rock-solid leanness from playing season, which made Byers glance at his own stomach self-consciously. Susanne had worked on fattening him up, so for the first time in his life, Byers couldn't quite be described as a beanpole.

 

They debated going out to dinner, but Will was on his way from Evreux-Fauville Air Base, where he was stationed for the moment. Instead, Susanne cooked and everyone else milled around the kitchen, sneaking tidbits and claiming they tried to stay out of the way.

 

"You were a medical doctor, yes?" Susanne asked, trying to make polite conversation with Dana as she sliced and diced. 

 

She'd met Dana twice: one Christmas in Aspen and one in Georgetown after Mulder was shot. She knew Dana had been a nurse, had been in medical school, and Mulder dated her on and off for several years. Ben was born before they married, but they were married now, which made it acceptable in Susanne's and most people’s minds. Like everyone else, she assumed Dana was widowed soon after Emily's birth, and Byers let her assume.

 

"I started medical school. I didn't finish. Emily was sick. Benjamin was coming," Dana answered evasively. "I would like to go back, someday. I would like to practice."

 

"Really?" Mulder said, and an uncomfortable pause followed. 

 

Dana shrugged. "Someday. Once the children are older."

 

"Oh," Mulder responded, looking like he forgot where he put his keys.

 

"Susanne, you attended college, didn't you?" Byers asked, knowing she had and hoping to move the conversation along.

 

"I did. The University of Berlin. Before John and I married, of course."

 

"Were you there at the same time as Wernher von Braun? Or Heisenberg?" Mulder asked curiously.

 

"They were physicists: quantum mechanics, theoretical physics-"

 

"Nuclear fission," Mulder said, pantomiming an explosion.

 

"-and I was studying chemistry."

 

"Alfred Grotjahn was there, wasn't he?" Mulder asked. "And Hans Gunther. Victor Klemper, chairing the Gesellschaft fur Rassehygiene."

 

The Society for Racial Hygiene. Eugenics. Byers recognized the names as Nazi scientists, many from the Nuremburg Trials. It seemed odd but logically, in the late thirties, in Germany, Hitler was in power, which meant Nazi scientists worked at the University of Berlin with Susanne. Byers had never thought about it. It was like Dana attending medical school; before he and Susanne married, before the war, Susanne was a university student. Aside from being proud of his bright, well-educated wife, her education had little bearing on their lives.

 

"I was studying chemistry," she repeated, her words more clipped. "A long time ago. Now, we get the best grades on science projects." Susanne smiled and ruffled Katy's hair. 

 

Katy shrugged away uncomfortably.

 

"You knew them though, didn't you?" Mulder persisted, staring at her as he held Ben. "You had to."

 

"There were no Jews at University once Hitler was the Fuhrer."

 

"But you don't look like a Jew. I do. My sons do. My mother's family did, but you don't. They couldn't pass, but you could."

 

"Mulder," Dana warned as Byers opened his mouth to object.

 

"What was the holdup with your passport?” Mulder asked. “You made it to England, but the government wouldn't let you immigrate to the States, even after you married an American citizen. I wondered why. You were expecting, and Byers wanted you away from the fighting, but they wouldn't let you leave England until after the war. Most Jews had no problem immigrating: Einstein, Freud-"

 

"Mulder!" Dana said sharply.

 

Byers was too stunned to speak. Susanne's family escaped Poland in the back of a truck, hidden among bags of seed corn. Her mother had a coat with a yellow Star of David sewn on it; she'd shown it to Katy and Ana. Obviously, it was a painful memory, and obviously, Susanne didn't want to talk about it. Byers thought Mulder would be the last person to push her.

 

Mulder kept staring at Susanne, grimly determined, like a dog with a bone. Byers knew the look; Mulder wasn't sorry and he wouldn’t drop the subject. Ana and Katy put down their carrot sticks. The girls looked at their mother, at Mulder, and at their mother again.

 

Susanne seemed shaken but she met Mulder's gaze. "It was a long time ago," she said evenly, enunciating carefully. "Now my girls get the best grades on their science projects."

 

Dana exhaled and started to apologize, but got interrupted by wheels crunching on the gravel driveway and a motorcycle engine rumbling as it coasted to a stop. Metal squeaked as the kickstand went down. A young man in a blue Air Force uniform got off the bike. William shrugged off his bomber jacket and looped his sunglasses on the front of his shirt. He started to run his fingers through his dark hair, but stopped as if remembering it wasn't long enough to be windblown.

 

"Bub," Emily announced, sliding down from her chair.

 

Dana got up and followed her daughter. Katy and Ana went with her, leaving Mulder, Byers, and Susanne in the kitchen.

 

On the front lawn, Will picked up Emily and gave Dana a one-armed bear hug. Will swung Dana around so her skirt whirled up and her slip and the tops of her stockings showed. She admonished him and got a real hug, with Will leaning down and resting his head on her shoulder. To Byers, Will looked like a little boy who had to grow up too fast. 

 

Mulder glanced at Susanne again, but turned, carrying Ben and going to greet his older son.

 

"Yes, I knew them," Susanne admitted as Mulder passed her. "But I did not know who they were. No one did, then. They were just men, not monsters."

 

*~*~*~*

 

Benjamin Mulder made Byers wish he had a son, and William Mulder made Byers careful what he wished for. Byers didn't dislike the young man, but to the father of two little girls who insisted on growing up too quickly, William meant Trouble with a capital T: too handsome, too charming, and too practiced at putting those mischievous brown eyes and lazy grin to good use. Will wasn't a chip off the old block; he was an entire chunk.

 

Last March, Byers’ secretary had buzzed in, apologizing for interrupting the meeting and telling him Mr. Mulder was on the line. Mr. Mulder had an emergency, she said, but whenever Mulder wanted something, Mulder thought he had an emergency. Byers sighed, excused himself, and picked up the telephone in the conference room. In the background, competing with Will's uncertain voice, Byers heard a pressured chaos of noise: a siren dying, wheels clattering across a hard floor, and indistinct droning over an intercom.

 

"Slow down and tell me what's wrong." Byers gestured for the other lawyers be quiet. "Are you all right, Will? Where are you?"

 

"At hospital. The hospital in Kingston."

 

"What happened? Are you hurt? Or sick?"

 

"I-I didn't see him," Will stuttered, struggling to speak. "It was raining; he ran the stop sign. I didn't see the car. I didn't see it."

 

"But you're okay?" Byers asked. "Did you call your father?"

 

"The police called him. He's coming. Oh God, he's gonna kill me."

 

"He's not going to kill you, Will. Calm down. It's a car. As long as you're all right, that's all that matters." There was a long pause. Byers asked, "Are you all right?"

 

"Yes. No," Will answered, his voice breaking. "Bloody hell, I don't know."

 

Mulder should be in Florida for spring training. Even if he chartered a plane, hours would pass before he landed in New York. 

 

"Let me talk to the doctor," Byers requested. "Give the phone to your doctor and let me talk to him." 

 

"A-all the doctors are with Maddie."

 

Byers' chest tightened. People needed a scorecard to keep track of Will's conquests, but he recognized that name. "Was she with you?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Is she okay?"

 

Will took a shuddery breath. "No. She hit her head. She wouldn’t wake up. Can you come? Frohike can't come. He said to call you."

 

Byers looked back at the attorneys around the conference table, waiting to start the firm's meeting. He had seventy-two hours until he returned to Normandy, and his secretary had every second booked, trying to squeeze a month's worth of work into three days. "Is she dead, Will?"

 

"No."

 

"Will, I-"

 

"She's pregnant."

 

Byers bit his lip hard and closed his eyes. He exhaled. "I will be there as soon as I can. Sit tight."

 

Contrary to Mulder’s claims, Byers could drive faster than thirty-five miles per hour. He honked and weaved, but still took eons to get through Manhattan traffic. Once the road cleared, he flew up the highway. His borrowed sports car's wheels hummed over the miles of slick asphalt ribbon toward the mountains. It began to drizzle, and to storm. Byers fumbled with the unfamiliar knobs and switches. He tried to watch the road while he battled the foggy windshield. The wipers slapped back and forth, cutting a clear arc across the glass as the rain drummed on the car's canvas roof.

 

It was a miserable day: cold and gray and so wet even the sidewalk should have been spongy. The hospital air conditioner had forgotten it was March. Byers shivered despite his suit and trench coat.

 

"I suppose this is when I promise I won't be any more trouble," Will said tiredly, turning away from the window in the lobby. He had Band-Aids on his forehead, a vividly bruised and scraped cheekbone, and his left arm in a sling. His shirt was gone. He had a rip in the leg of his blue jeans and smears of blood across his white T-shirt. For once, he'd lost his cool, cocky facade, and he looked like he wasn't sure if the universe was real or not.

 

"Are you okay, Will?"

 

Will smirked half-heartedly as he sank into a plastic chair. The boy moved like his whole body ached. 

 

Byers stood in front of him, holding the briefcase he'd inexplicably carried in from the car. He opened his mouth several times, searching for a neutral tone before he asked, "How is Madelon?"

 

"They had to cut her hair and remove her spleen." Will took a careful breath. "I don't even know where my spleen is. Do boys have spleens?"

 

"She's still in surgery?"

 

"She's back. Her father's with her. She wanted to talk to him alone. He doesn't speak much English, so he doesn't know about-" He glanced up, down again, and picked at the rip in his jeans. "Go ahead. Say it."

 

Byers didn't have to. This was exactly what Mulder never wanted for his son, and Will knew it. His father held onto a normal life by a gossamer thread, and this was exactly what he didn't need. Dana, Will, and Emily were Mulder’s world, and only Will remained. Unfortunately, Mulder seemed oblivious to his son sleeping his way through the Lower Hudson Valley.

 

"I'm not daft. I was being careful. Mostly."

 

"Mostly?"

 

"It was an accident."

 

"How? You lost your balance and accidentally fell in bed with her?"

 

Will hung his head miserably.

 

Byers checked his temper and set his briefcase down. "Are you certain you're the father of this baby?" he asked in a softer voice.

 

Will glanced up, perplexed, as if Byers asked a stupid question. "Yes."

 

"Have you thought about what you want to do?"

 

"Maddie wants to keep it. She wants to get married."

 

"What do you want?"

 

"I told her I wanted the same thing." Will studied the floor again.

 

"But what do you want to do?"

 

"Anything except tell my father. Bloody hell, he's gonna kill me."

 

Byers sat beside him, not sure what to do except wait for Mulder. Frohike was Will's confidant and partner in crime, but Frohike was in Florida, trying to keep his ballplayers in line.

 

"Do you want me to call your mother?"

 

"God no," Will muttered. He slouched in the chair.

 

Byers watched the clock on the wall as its metal hands inched away the afternoon. Will studied it. He leaned his head back against the wall, closing his eyes. "I have a chemistry mid-term in ten minutes."

 

"I don't think you're going to make it."

 

Will bit his lower lip until it went white. He opened his eyes, glancing around the lobby. The florist delivered a tray of bouquets, with the senders' get-well messages perched on little plastic pitchforks. A pretty young woman loaded them onto a metal cart and pushed it toward the elevator. She smiled sympathetically as she passed Will.

 

Byers caught Will starting to smile back.

 

"Will..." he said in frustration.

 

"When Dana comes back-" Will said. "When Dana comes back, Dana and Dad could take the baby. He wants another baby. He wants a girl. They could get married, and they could adopt the baby, and that would make everything all right. Right?" he asked uncertainly.

 

Byers swallowed his lecture about responsibility and being a man, and answered, "She's not coming back, Will. Not after this long. Your father knows, whether he says it or not."

 

"Dad could still take care of it," Will tried. "He likes babies."

 

Byers answered honestly. "Without Dana, I think the only way your father could take care of it is by calling Frohike. If that's what you want, you need to tell him."

 

For a second, Will had the spoiled, petulant expression Byers detested. Then he looked scared and lost. "I don't know what to do."

 

"I think you'd better decide," Byers answered.

 

Mulder emerged from a taxicab and sprinted for the hospital entrance.

 

"Will?" Mulder said as he burst through the doors. Mulder dodged around a slow-moving man on crutches with his wet cleats squeaking. Mulder still wore his pinstriped uniform, and rain spotted the shoulders of his baseball jersey. "My God; are you all right?"

 

Will stood stiffly and wiped his palm on his jeans.

 

"Oh my God, son." His hands shook as they hovered over Will's bruised face and the sling keeping his left arm immobile. "Are you okay?"

 

Will nodded. Mulder put his arms around the boy like he cradled glass. His son closed his eyes and laid his head on his father's shoulder.

 

"God. My boy. My baby boy. All in one piece. The police scared the hell out of me." Mulder rubbed Will's back, buried his face in his hair, and inhaled. Byers expected Will to pull away, but he didn't. Mulder moved back, but the boy remained still, letting his father catalog his injuries. "What happened, son? The police said you were speeding."

 

"I didn't see the car. I'm sorry. It was raining. He ran a stop sign. I didn't see him and I-I couldn't stop in time. He, he hit Maddie's side."

 

"Maddie was with you?"

 

Will nodded.

 

"The officer said the wreck happened at one in the morning. What were you doing driving around with Maddie at one in the morning?"

 

William shrugged and flinched at the same time but didn't answer. "She's upstairs. She had to have surgery.

 

"Is she going to be all right?"

 

"She's going to have a baby," Will said as quickly as possible, like his father might misunderstand or not notice if he said it fast enough. "We want to get married."

 

Mulder froze. A few damp strands of hair on his forehead moved as the air conditioner vent blew them. Will couldn't quite do it, but his father could: Mulder could have no expression.

 

"Are you sure?" Mulder asked after several long seconds. It seemed an all-purpose 'are you sure': are you sure she's pregnant, sure the baby's yours, and sure you want to marry her.

 

Will wilted more. He nodded.

 

After a heartbeat, Mulder nodded back. "Okay. I'll, uh, I'll- Wait here. Let me find a cup of coffee and the men's room, and- And I'll be back."

 

"I think there's a cafeteria," Byers offered.

 

Mulder looked at him in surprise. Mulder must have been too focused on Will to notice Byers standing there.

 

"Thank you for coming," Mulder said crisply as they walked down the hall, leaving Will in the lobby.

 

"He called my office. He was upset."

 

"I'm sure he was."

 

"Mulder-"

 

"Thank you," Mulder repeated. He turned and disappeared into the restroom.

 

Byers heard water splashing. A screech as the faucet turned off. There was a pause, and a crash of metal accompanied by a stream of curses that would have made a sailor proud.

 

Byers pushed open the men's room door as Mulder slammed his fist into the paper towel dispenser. Mulder knocked the metal cover off and sent the roll of brown paper unfurling across the tiles. He kicked the roll for good measure. He leaned back against one of the sinks, clutching his hand and staring up at the ceiling. Unless Byers was mistaken, Mulder struggled not to cry.

 

"Are you-"

 

"No," Mulder answered in a strangled voice. "How the hell do you think I am? What is he thinking? He's barely seventeen-years-old."

 

"He is seventeen. You have custody. He can't get married unless you consent."

 

Mulder blinked. He watched a flickering light bulb on the ceiling as he seemed to consider his options. "He loves her. I know he does."

 

"He's a child. He doesn't know what love is, and he doesn't know what he wants except for the problem to go away," Byers advised. "I think the best thing would be for you to make the decision for him."

 

"He doesn't get to be a child any longer."

 

"Let him provide for her baby if she insists on keeping it. He did make a mistake. Make him get a job at a filling station after school and learn some responsibility."

 

"Until he meets a nice girl in college he wants to marry and have a real family with?"

 

Byers started to agree but he realized Mulder was being sarcastic.

 

"He's not stupid. He's not naïve," Mulder said, talking primarily to himself. "Some accidents are less accidental than others." He pursed his lips. "I like Maddie. She's good for him. If he wants to marry her-"

 

"You can't be serious."

 

"I raised a good son, Byers. Maddie's a nice girl."

 

"If she was a nice girl, she wouldn't be in trouble."

 

Mulder gave him as look so venomous the force of it made Byers step backward. "We can't all be the bastion of moral fortitude you are," Mulder retorted angrily. "Some of us are human beings. Some of us are just doing the best we can."

 

Unsure how to respond, Byers pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and offered it to Mulder from a safe distance. "I know," he said lamely.

 

"No, I don't think you do."

 

Byers held the handkerchief out for a few seconds until it was clear Mulder wouldn’t take it. Mulder went back to watching the light on the ceiling flicker on and off, on and off, in time with the blood dripping from his knuckles. Behind him, the mirror was a patchwork quilt of cracks; Mulder must have punched it as well.

 

"Dana's gonna kill me," he said.

 

Byers thought Dana Scully was the least of Mulder's worries, but he didn't say so.

 

The light-bulb gave up the ghost, leaving the men's room lit by the dim bulb over the door. In the broken mirror, their reflections seemed darker than the men Byers thought they were.

 

Byers offered his handkerchief again, and this time Mulder exhaled and took it. Byers decided he was done giving advice - legal or otherwise - for the day.

 

"I've known a nice girl who got in trouble," Mulder said as he wrapped the white fabric around his bloody knuckles and tied it awkwardly in place.

 

"I know you have," Byers answered as he slid down from his moral high horse. Once Mulder's anger faded, Byers didn't think he'd ever seen anyone look so sad. Empty. Lost. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pass judgment. Come on; I'll buy you a cup of coffee."

 

*~*~*~*

 

"You know you're welcome to stay as long as you want," Byers said softly, finding Dana alone on the porch after dinner. "If there's anything Susanne and I can do, please let us know. We want to help."

 

Mulder stood at the edge of the back yard holding Ben and staring at the ocean in the distance. Will stood with him, tall and slim, the breeze blowing his Air Force uniform. The sun hovered above the horizon, and the almost-full moon rose, pressing through the vast fabric of the sky and giving birth to the beginning of night.

 

"Thank you." Dana found a polite smile and put it on again.

 

"I don't mean to pry, but is he all right?"

 

"He has a lot on his mind right."

 

"I understand," Byers said, though he didn't. 

 

Mulder got it all: family, fame, fortune. All of it. He wrestled with the Devil and won. Alex Krycek, whoever or whatever he'd been, was dead. Dana had returned. Ben was healthy. Emily seemed better. Will wasn't dead or in prison. This was where the hero rode into the sunset, but Mulder stood and stared at it, holding one son and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the other.

 

"How far is it?" Mulder called, looking back. "The bunker?"

 

It took Byers a moment to realize what Mulder meant. "About forty-five minutes up the coast, and a short walk," Byers answered.

 

"Would you drive us?" he requested, back-lit in scarlet by the clouds. "I want Will to see it."

 

Byers nodded. He returned to the house long enough to tell Susanne where he was going, get his jacket, his car keys, and find an old pair of loafers. After a silent drive, Byers parked on the roadside, near an ancient stone fence, and led the way. Mulder and Ben followed, and Will brought up the rear. The shadowy path meandered through the woods and high hedgerows, along the edge of a cow pasture, then opened to a cliff littered with broken chunks of concrete and twisted metal, and what looked like the doorway to an old root cellar.

 

Mulder walked around to look at the side of the unassuming, squat cement bunker hugging the face of a cliff. Byers saw him tense as if he still expected brown-uniformed German soldiers to be waiting inside.

 

"It's empty," Byers reminded him. As silly as it sounded, they both needed to hear it.

 

Will ducked into the narrow gray passage and Mulder followed, covering Ben's head with his hand. The inside was empty; anything of value or nostalgia got carried off years ago. The cement walls were pockmarked with bullet holes and large chunks had fallen from the ceiling. All remaining of Hitler's great seawall were cramped, damp bunkers like this one, with rifle slits looking out toward the ocean.

 

"This is where it happened," Will said, sounding like he didn't quite believe it. "D-Day."

 

June 6th, 1944 was the greatest invasion by sea the world had ever seen. One hundred and fifty-thousand soldiers came ashore that day, most never having seen combat before. The Germans had the north coast of France heavily fortified, and even with air and battleship support, the Allies knew the first troops on the beach would be slaughtered. Seasoned soldiers would retreat from certain death, but green troops didn't think the bullets applied to them. A few experienced captains and lieutenants led - Byers and Mulder among them - but the rest of the men had no idea what they'd face once the landing vehicles reached the shore and the gangplanks dropped.

 

Byers and Mulder should have been in the third wave, but were the fourth by the time they made it to shore: seasick, soaked, freezing, trying to scream commands and locate their men over the machine guns and mortars. The tide came in, devouring the beach and forcing them forward, toward the enemy. Their rifles were wet and useless, and the water was pink with blood. Bodies floated face-down in the choppy sea - soldiers shot as they waded and swam ashore, or drowned by the weight of their gear or because they couldn't swim. Around them, on the sand, weren't men, but pieces of men.

 

"The big guns were mounted here," Mulder told Will. He looked through the rifle slits to the golden sand of Omaha Beach in the distance. "Seventy-five and eighty-eight millimeter heavy artillery, aimed at our ships off-shore. They’re like a freight train screaming across the sky. In the trenches down there they had the machine guns. German MG-42's. 1200 rounds a minute. They fire so fast it sounds like canvas ripping."

 

Byers stayed at the back of the dark bunker, restless.  He'd been here, but alone. He never brought Susanne or the girls to see the bomb craters and rows of rusting razor wire among the weeds. He wanted to protect his family from this, not share it with them.

 

Mulder turned Ben so the baby faced the waves eroding the sand. "I'd seen combat in Italy, but nothing like this. This was Hell on Earth. Any man who says he wasn't terrified is lying. No one on this beach wanted to be a hero. D-Day had nothing to do with courage and everything to do with necessity. You'll be amazed what you can do once there's no going back. No choice. If you go back, you die, so you keep pushing forward."

 

"I suppose." Will leaned his elbows on the front wall of the bunker and stared out at the darkening sky.

 

"You say I never talk about the war, but how do you explain necessary evil to a child? There's no glory in killing. How do you say you've done things - for their sake - you couldn't conceive of yourself doing until the need arose?"

 

"I don't know."

 

"I don't either, but I'd do it all again, if need be. We weren't trying to save the world, Will; we did what had to be done. Those moments of absolute necessity: that's when you discover what kind of man you are and what you're capable of. The good and the bad."

 

Byers shifted again.

 

Will nodded. "Why were you here? You could have gotten deferred or spent the war playing exhibition games. You didn't have to fight."

 

"I did have to fight. Hitler had France and he was heading toward Britain. I had a son in London with a Jewish father. If we didn't stop them here, there wouldn’t be a second chance. Sometimes you don't get a second chance, Will."

 

Will's jaw broadened as he gritted his teeth.

 

"I'm proud of you," Mulder continued. "You know, don't you? It's okay to have doubts. It's okay to be afraid. Being a husband is hard, but being a father is like letting your heart go for a walk outside your body."

 

Another nod. This father-son fieldtrip had a subtext Byers hadn't anticipated. Will was one of those people who always seemed to land on his feet, but he'd jumped into the deep end this time: a new wife, an unplanned-for baby, and a job taking him far away from both.

 

Byers had witnessed this drama once before, as had William. Firsthand.

 

"You can do this, Will. I know you can. It's like hitting a baseball. You do all the thinking and planning and worrying beforehand, but once it's time, you stop thinking and do it. You swing for fences, son."

 

"Like you said, there's no going back."

 

"Nope."

 

Will hesitated. "I do love her."

 

"I know," Mulder assured him. "And I know what kind of man you are. You can do this," he repeated. "It'll be okay."

 

Will pushed back and looked up at the crumbling ceiling. "So you took this bunker?" he asked, abruptly changing the subject. "You and Mr. Byers made it up here and took the bunker?"

 

"God no," Mulder answered. "One of the Navy destroyers got it. We were-" He pointed vaguely toward the beach. "Over there. Miles from where we were supposed to be. Our landing vehicle was off-course and Byers lost his glasses and one of the radios coming ashore-"

 

"Mulder had the map." Byers stepped forward. "We didn't know where we were. We were lucky he didn't have us storm Belgium."

 

"I knew where we were, Captain Byers."

 

Byers gave Mulder a 'sure you did' look, and turned. He climbed over the rubble in the doorway and emerged to a world bathed dark auburn by the sunset. The sun settled behind the ocean, casting an otherworldly glow across the water and over hunks of broken cement so large it looked like the gods had been shooting dice. The salty breeze rustled Byers’ hair, and prickled the bare skin above his beard. It seemed strange to hear nothing except the waves, and Mulder and Will's muffled voices in the bunker. No machine gun fire, no screams, no mortars, no calls for help. It was peaceful, except for the echoes in his mind.

 

They won the war here. The fighting dragged on another year or so, but this was where they made their stand and drove Hitler back. Byers didn't enjoy being on the beach again, but he knew what it stood for, and he liked it between his family and the rest of the world.

 

As Will and Mulder emerged from the bunker a few minutes later, Byers asked Will, "Did your father ever tell you he dragged me halfway up that beach?"

 

Will shook his head, looking interested

 

Byers continued. "I was hit in the leg as we came out of the water. It wasn't fatal, but I was losing blood, I couldn't run, and we had no cover. We were under fire. Mulder grabbed my collar and dragged me two hundred yards until we found a foxhole."

 

Will grinned, liking this story, while Mulder bounced Ben and looked around for something else to talk about.

 

"He wasn't supposed to," Byers explained. "We were told if a man was hit, leave him behind. We needed to get up the beach as quickly as possible, and we couldn't do that if every soldier tried to save his buddy."

 

"My unit was supposed to cover his, and he owed me three bucks," Mulder said in his own defense.

 

Mulder looked at the amber and golden beach, and shifted Ben to his other arm. For a long time, he stood still, his eyes far away. 

 

Byers remembered what Mulder said as their landing vehicle approached the beach twelve years ago. Mulder had checked his rifle and looked at Byers sitting across from him. Mulder had kept his head down and probably struggled not to vomit again. “You look out for my son, Byers. The address is on my tags.”

 

“You look out for my wife,” Byers had responded. 

 

Mulder had nodded. They lurched forward as the boat struck something underwater and stopped, fifty feet offshore. The gangplank splashed open into the choppy water.

 

William had been five years old; Byers and Susanne had been married a few weeks.

 

"Dad?" Will’s voice said worriedly. "Mr. Byers?"

 

Mulder glanced at Byers and added in his glib, deadpan manner, "Come to think of it, Byers, you still owe me three bucks."

 

Mulder slapped Byers on the back. He looped his arm around Byers' shoulders affectionately, and carried Ben on his hip as they walked back to the car.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Byers favorite time of day was the long, cool lowering hour as late evening sank into night. The yellow harvest moon remained a few slivers from full. It pushed back the last of the blue and violet shadows, covering the fields in expansive black. Above, the sky glittered in a thick blanket of stars, unmarred by city lights. The dog went out one last time before she settled her old bones in front of the hearth with a wet sigh. The dinner dishes got dried and put away, the children tucked in bed, and the house belonged to the grownups. Fairy time, his grandmother called it. The rational day gives way to the magic of night.

 

"Burgundy," Byers guessed, and took another sip from the wineglass. "Or Bordeaux. Fine Bordeaux."

 

He’d found the bottles in the walled-up wine cellar, hidden from the Nazis and forgotten under layers of dust. The house had been empty for ten years. Most of the labels were missing, so if he and Susanne were adventurous enough to open a bottle, they could find anything from a smoothly aging red to red wine vinegar.

 

"We don't know what this one is either, but John said it is old, red, and good," Susanne explained as she carried another bottle to the living room.

 

Mulder and Dana sat on the sofa with their backs to the kitchen and their feet propped on the ottoman. Will sat on the floor beside the radio, searching for a station meeting everyone's approval. The first bottle was on the coffee table with an inch of wine remaining inside it. The rest had been divided between Dana, Susanne, Byers, and Will, who, to everyone's amusement, asked his father's permission before accepting a glass.

 

Again, Mulder declined. He crossed his ankles and adjusted his arm around Dana's shoulders as she sipped her wine. "What are the chances of me getting you tipsy and taking advantage of you?" Byers heard him murmur to Dana, after Susanne returned to the kitchen.

 

"I wouldn't rule it out," Dana said quietly, from behind her glass. "It's good wine."

 

"You think they'd notice if we took another shower?"

 

"Probably, Mulder."

 

Will must have overheard, because he rolled his eyes and turned the radio up. "God," he mumbled, sounding disgusted.

 

Byers caught Susanne's wrist as she returned with another bottle of mineral water. He pulled her back to him and put his arms around her waist. He fitted her back against his front and listened to the slow, hypnotic jazz on the radio.

 

"That discussion we had earlier?" Byers whispered, and she nodded. "I've been thinking about it, and I do think it's a good idea."

 

The more he watched Mulder with Ben, the more he wanted to be a father again. Now. Like this. He had the time and resources to care for his family the way he wanted to. 

 

When the girls were small, he'd struggled to make ends meet: a new wife, two babies, a cramped apartment, and a one-man law firm with too much overhead and not enough income. He remembered weeks Mulder was his only client. He remembered weeks his secretary got paid, and he and Susanne lived on beans and rice. He remembered Susanne nursing the girls because they couldn't afford baby formula and the doctor scolding her Katy and Ana would be malnourished. He remembered catching the subway into Manhattan before dawn, and returning home, shoulders aching, feet stinging, long after dark.

 

He'd trudge up the stairs swearing to himself he would become a plumber. The apartment door would open to Susanne in her apron, his dinner staying warm in the oven, and his girls clean and dressed for bed. He'd hang up his hat, coat, and jacket, shed his shoes, and lie in bed with the three of them. They’d read stories until the girls couldn’t keep their eyes open any longer. Susanne couldn't stay awake, either. Byers would turn the oven off so his dinner didn't burn to a crisp, move the girls to their crib, and return to bed with Susanne, preferring staying with his wife to eating.

 

Byers remembered, in those lean years, knowing he could catch the seven-fifty subway six blocks from his old office and make it home in time to put the girls to bed. He remembered never missing a night.

 

"What if we cannot?" Susanne’s whispered words smelled of sun-warmed vineyards. "What if something is wrong or it is too late?"

 

"Then we cannot, but it can't hurt to try." He paused, enjoying her against him. "I think I would like to try, if you would."

 

"I would," she said softly, leaning her cheek against his shoulder.

 

Mulder tilted his head back, glancing over the top of the sofa. He looked at Byers with his arms around Susanne. Without comment, Mulder went back to watching his sock feet and the crackling hearth in front of them. "Hey Will?" Mulder said carelessly, stroking Dana's arm.

 

"Hummm," Will responded from the floor.

 

"Those people who say these are the best years of your life?"

 

"Um-hum."

 

"Those people lie," Mulder informed his son. Mulder grinned and turned his head, making a low purring sound in his throat as he kissed Dana's earlobe.

 

Will rolled his eyes again.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Occasionally, it still happened. Byers would be in a store or on the sidewalk, and spot Susanne a few yards from him. She’d be occupied with shopping or the girls. He'd watch her, follow her unobtrusively, thinking what an enchanting woman she was. 

 

You're married; you aren't supposed to be enchanted with other women, his conscience would remind him, and send twinge of guilt down his spine.

 

You're married to her, his higher brain would realize.

 

Oh yes. That's right, he'd remember proudly, still surprised.

 

Byers reached around Susanne and turned the lock on their bedroom door. The lights stayed off but the moon outside the window lit the walls soft yellow. The air was cool enough to give her chill bumps as he unfastened the front of her dress. He kissed her swollen lips, her throat, the hollow of her neck.

 

"Cold?" he whispered, and she nodded, her eyes huge and blue in the darkness. "Come to bed."

 

He reached to pull loose a tie he wasn't wearing and started on his shirt buttons. She stepped out of her shoes and let her dress fall to the floor, leaving her slip and stockings. One of the straps fell off her shoulder, showing her white bra, and he traced the outline of her garter up her thigh. She was pale smoothness under his hands: soft skin and slippery silk and nylon. He loved the tastes and textures of her; he'd committed them to memory long ago.

 

"Give me a thousand years and I might get tired of looking at you," he whispered, stroking her cheek.

 

"My John." She caressed his name with her lips. "My sweet John. You love me so much, don't you?"

 

He pushed her hair back from her face. "Yes, I love you," he answered, in case she wanted to hear it a millionth time.

 

To his surprise, instead of kissing him, she laid her head on his chest, against his heart, and stayed there for a long time. He put his arms around her, uncertain what was wrong.

 

"Susanne?"

 

She slipped away, sat on the edge of the bed, and studied the rug. He sat beside her, his unbuttoned cuffs flopping and his shirt open.

 

"What is it?"

 

"What Mr. Mulder said about me marrying you to become an American citizen- It, it is not true."

 

"Of course it's not true. I don't know what got into him."

 

She looked at him sadly, hunched her shoulders, and went back to examining the rug. Her hair fell over her cheeks and hid her face. "I do not want you to think it is true. You are- I think you are the kindest, gentlest man I have ever met. I married you because I was lost and you found me."   

 

"I'm thankful I did." He hoped that was the right thing to say. Before today, he had trouble recalling the last time he'd seen her upset.

 

"You knew there was someone else. Before we met."

 

"Yes, I knew." She'd told him before they married, in case he might change his mind. He hadn't.

 

"You never asked who."

 

"According the Kinsey survey, fifty-percent of college-educated women have had premarital-" Then he said, "I thought if you'd wanted to tell me, you would have."

 

They were in their mid-twenties when they met. He found promiscuity unacceptable, but they weren't teenagers. He'd dated in high school and college and had several girlfriends in law school. Some of those girls, some nights – doing the right thing had taken all the resolve he’d possessed. If he’d been engaged, or more of a drinker, or even going steady when he was drafted, he might have had to admit “someone else” to her.

 

Byers imagined Susanne was engaged and her lover died, either in the war or in the death camps. 

 

"I should have told you."

 

"Susanne, it was thirteen years ago. It didn't matter to me then; why should it matter now?"  

 

"I should have told you." She didn’t look at him. Gooseflesh covered the fair skin on her shoulders and arms. He pulled the blanket from the end of their bed and draped it around her.

 

"All right," he said quietly. "If you want to tell me, tell me."

 

Outside the window, the wind rustled the tree branches, making the dying leaves whisper secrets. The curtains billowed in the darkness like white ghosts, and he heard his heart beating faster.

 

"One of the professors at University," she said after a few tries. "One Mr. Mulder said. I worked on his projects. I was the only woman, the only one who had not finished my doctorate. I was so proud." She paused, adjusting the lace hem of her slip. "What Mr. Mulder said was true: by the late thirties, Jews were not welcome at University. Jewish students were expelled. Jewish professors retired or were fired. But I stayed. He said my research was important and he convinced me it was a small lie. No one would question me. I look Aryan, I speak German. He said he loved me. He said he could keep me safe. He said he could keep my family safe if the time came. I did not know what he meant, but I trusted him."

 

Byers opened his mouth to ask a question. He closed it again.

 

"I was an organic chemist. I worked in a laboratory, not with people. Tables, formulas, reactions. It was all here-" She pointed to her temple. "-and on paper. On slides under the microscope. There would be a question and I would do research and answer. This is how genetics work; this is how they do not work. This is why you cannot combine this cell with that one. Sometimes they would ask the strangest questions, and I could not imagine why anyone would want to know such things."

 

She adjusted the lace hem again, pulling it over her knees. "My research would go to the medical doctors, so I never saw the end result or even knew why the question was asked. Sometimes, the doctors would have data, and ask me to analyze them, to say what went wrong or what would work better. It was all numbers, but sometimes details would slip through and I could figure out what it was. They were animal experiments: reproduction, euthanasia, and xeno-transplantation - combining one species with another. Futile experiments. Things that would never work. The mortality rate was so high and the experiments were careless, as if no one cared if the lab animals lived or died."

 

"They weren't experimenting on lab animals," he said, voice breaking and not quite believing his ears. 

 

He saw the end result of those experiments at Dachau, one of the death camps in Germany. He remembered Mulder being strangely calm as they searched the camp and telling him to have their men open the boxcars. He remembered vomiting all over his boots, and Mulder giving the order to execute the German guards. Once they ran out of guards to shoot, Mulder shot the guard dogs. Byers saw the dead, pregnant bodies with numbers tattooed into their skin. He'd done his share of the killing, and it was the darkest day of his life. And he'd never told Susanne.

 

"But I did not know," she insisted. "They told us people were resettled. The Jews, the Gypsies, homosexuals, the feeble-minded and crippled: they vanished." She stopped to take a shuddery breath. "One day, I opened a file, and someone had left a memo in with the other papers. They were testing a Formalin solution, injecting it into the uterus to sterilize females. The data I had said the subjects were female rabbits. But this memo said 'Untermenschen.' Subhumans. Jewish women." She bit her lip. "He lied to me. He kept me in that lab, doing research for his Nazi friends. He said he hated Hitler. He did not believe in racial purity and secretly worked against it. I-I telephoned my family, told them to get out of Poland however they could. I got in my car, and I drove. I had papers and money; I could get through the checkpoints. From Berlin to Paris, to Marseilles. A ship to Morocco to meet my family and buy visas to Lisbon. In England, the intelligence officers detained me, but let my family go to America."

 

Byers stared at her, trying to comprehend how his beautiful wife could have any association with the stacks of dead bodies they found in Dachau.

 

"I-I married you because I loved you. I still love you," she whispered desperately. "You have given me so much: children, a home. I love you. Please stop looking at me like that, John."

 

"The camera in our bedroom in New York," he said evenly, staccato-like. "The bug in our telephone- They weren't monitoring me. They were monitoring you."

 

"No. Why would they? The war has been over for a decade. What would they want with me?"

 

"It's not over!" he barked.

 

She flinched. 

 

On the other side of their bedroom wall, Mulder cleared his throat loudly.

 

Byers took a breath, trying to stay calm. "The research you did, the experiments those men did? It didn't stop. Those men never stopped, Susanne. They relocated their labs and got better at it."

 

*~*~*~*

 

Mulder was a romantic at heart, and he adored Dana and Emily. If Mulder wanted to believe some conspiracy caused Dana to have a daughter out of wedlock, Byers saw little harm in it. Emily needed a last name; Mulder needed stability. As his friend, Byers recalled having concerns about Dana Scully, especially after her mysterious three-month disappearance and 'miscarriage,' but he wasn't dating her. Mulder was. Mulder was a grown man; he made his own decisions, and it did no good to try to reason with him. Love was blind or at least, conditionally myopic.

 

Byers had been able to push the pieces into some semblance of order in his mind. Alex Krycek was an obsessed psychopath who seduced or, more likely, forced Dana, with Emily being the end result. She repressed the memory and replaced it with one of government doctors and secret projects. Years later, Krycek kidnapped Dana, forcing her to abort the baby she carried. Later, in a fit of jealous rage, he shot Mulder and staged it to look like a mugging. He went to their house in Georgetown, looking for Dana and Emily. Krycek cornered them outside Frohike's apartment building last year, and Mulder put a bullet in Krycek and his friends’ heads.

 

Until the day Krycek died, John Byers could arrange the facts to fit his perception of the world, but he couldn’t deny what he'd seen. Krycek looked like a man, talked like a man, but he hadn't been. If he was Emily's father, by whatever means, she wasn't entirely human either.

 

Occam's razor was never intended for application to little girls.

 

For the first decade of their lives, Katy and Ana campaigned for separate bedrooms, desperate to avoid sister cooties. Now that they had them, Byers often found them like this: both in Katy's bed, asleep amid a nest of discarded Nancy Drew novels, textbooks, and diaries with miniature brass locks. Tonight they had Emily between them, and curled up like a trio of sated kittens. Three half-empty glasses of milk left rings on the nightstand around a plate of cookie crumbs. A dirty kiss of chocolate remained Emily's lips.

 

Katy slept like a log, but Ana opened her eyes as Byers stepped into the room. "I'm checking on you," he whispered, tucking the blankets around them. "Go back to sleep."

 

"Emily wanted to stay here," Ana whispered back in the hushed darkness. "We're having a slumber party."

 

"That's fine." He kissed her forehead, and he collected the plate and glasses to take to the kitchen, trying not to clink them together.

 

"What time is it?" she asked groggily.

 

Emily started to stir.

 

"Late. After midnight."

 

Ana nodded, rolled to her side, and slipped back into unconsciousness as easily as she'd slipped out. Standing beside the bed, Byers watched for a long time, studying their serene faces. His girls didn't sleep with a night light but they rigged one for Emily by draping a scarf over a small lamp. Their stuffed animals joined the party as well, lined up to guard the foot of the bed. Among them was a worn Kitty, his glass eyes missing, his fur loved off, and his tail hanging by a thread.

 

"Mr. Byers?" Emily said softly, as he was about to turn away.

 

"Yes, Emily? Are you feeling all right?"

 

She yawned. "Does Santa come to France?"

 

"Yes, he does," he assured her quietly. "Not for a few more months, but he comes. They call him Pere Noel. Father Christmas."

 

"Mommy says Santa is meta-for-ical," she informed him sleepily. "Mulder says Mommy's a party pooper."

 

"Go back to sleep, sweetheart."

 

She snuggled deeper into the valley between the two pillows. "Bub says Santa's a fat pervert who's keen to play with elves. Someone should call the law," she mumbled, and closed her eyes again.

 

Balancing the glasses on the plate like a waiter, Byers moved Kitty from the foot of the bed to Emily's arms. He stood in the doorway, studying her in the red light that filtered through the scarf. She was such a sweet, beautiful child. Bright. Much-loved. Composed and mature beyond her years, the way very sick children sometimes were. If Emily wanted the moon, Mulder would write a check and Dana would get a stepladder.

 

Each time Byers tried to broach the subject of Emily's illness, Mulder answered his questions with more questions. Less than two years ago, Byers recalled reports of endless specialists and hospitals. Dana all but swabbed people with alcohol before she let them near her daughter. Several times Emily was close to death, rapidly losing the battle between her red blood cells and her immune system. Last spring, at Mulder's and then Will's wedding, the girl looked frighteningly ill. Byers assumed the end was near. Now, Emily tired easily. She had nosebleeds, but otherwise seemed healthy. Byers had asked if he and Susanne needed to do anything special during her visit, and Mulder said, “Wash your hands and try not to sneeze on her.”

 

According to Langly's monthly summaries, soon after Dana, Emily, and Ben returned, Mulder made a large purchase from a medical supply company. Byers checked, making sure it was a legitimate expense: a small autoclave, a specialized refrigerator, a microscope, IV poles, and everything necessary to collect and store blood or to perform a transfusion. All they needed was a nurse qualified to do the procedure, and a suitable donor. Dana was a nurse, and Mulder and Will were O positive. Except Will joined the Air Force shortly thereafter. Which left Mulder. 

 

Byers assumed Ben was ill, but Mulder assured Byers the baby was fine. Mulder said Dana purchased the equipment for Emily and changed the subject. Melvin Frohike was equally unhelpful, which meant mischief was afoot.

 

Emily's and Mulder's blood cells should be no more compatible than two strangers', yet they must be. Mulder and Dana weren't related, and Emily was Mulder’s daughter by adoption - Byers saw the blood test. Aside from a statistical anomaly, one possibly remained. Mulder was closely related to Emily’s real father. The thought sent a dark chill trickling down Byers' spine.

 

"Did they settle down?" Mulder's voice asked.

 

Byers jumped, rattling the glasses. He steadied them with his free hand before they crashed to the floor.

 

"Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."

 

"I-I didn't hear you. Yes, they're asleep."

 

Mulder's flannel shirt was unbuttoned, with the sleeves casually rolled up. Above the V-neck of his undershirt, a faded scar ran from the base of his throat and disappeared underneath the white fabric. He must have realized Byers could see it, because Mulder adjusted his t-shirt uncomfortably. He started buttoning his shirt, watching his fingers. 

 

"Did you know," Mulder started awkwardly, still working with the buttons, "your wife is on the porch?  She's, uh- She's just sitting."

 

Byers switched from watching Mulder button to watching the floor, not focusing on either. "Oh," he said. He turned and watched his feet follow Mulder down the stairs.

 

Will lay on the sofa, sprawled in the black oblivion of sleep with one hand hanging off the edge and a foot propped on armrest. His lips parted and his eyes twitched beneath his eyelids as he dreamed.

 

"Hello, Daddy-O," he mumbled as Mulder pulled the blanket so it covered his escaped foot and lifted Will's hand back to his chest. 

     

"Hello, baby boy." Mulder smoothed what remained of Will's shorn hair.

 

Someone - Dana probably - had taken a roll of film of Maddie showing off her belly, and one of the black and white snapshots was propped against Will's empty wineglass on the coffee table. Mulder picked it up, squinted at it expressionlessly, and silently put it back. He rubbed Will's foot before he moved on. 

 

The logs in the hearth fell into molten orange cinders, hissing and sparking and dancing around the room as firelight. The front door was closed, but the window remained open a few inches, and the cool air whistled as it stole in. Mulder paused to look out, scanning the horizon as though making certain it was safe before he relaxed for a few hours. Byers stood beside him, wondering what he watched for. At least Mulder had a glimpse of the enemy; Byers felt like he shot at shadows.

 

"A smart woman told me everything has a price, and I had to decide if what I'd gain by being with her was worth what I might lose. I think she's worth it," Mulder said quietly, and let the curtains fall over the window. 

 

Byers nodded thoughtfully, not sure what they were discussing.  Mulder wasn't looking at him, but Byers had the uncomfortable feeling of being exposed.

 

"Goodnight, Byers."

 

"Goodnight," he responded automatically.

 

Mulder pushed open the door to the guestroom. Byers saw Dana in bed, reading. Ben slept in the corner in the old crib. Dana turned as Mulder entered, and lowered her book, saying something Byers couldn't hear. As the door closed, Mulder answered affirmatively, and sank onto the bed beside her.

 

Byers watched the door, feeling like a stranger in his own home. Time seemed distant, impersonal, as if he stood still as the world turned around him, a complicated tangle of secrets and lies. His wife had been one of Them. Them: the Nazis, the government scientists, the madmen, the corrupt elite. The evil he'd fought to stop before it spread to a global plague. More than a decade later, Byers found he slept with the enemy and sat across from her at breakfast.

 

More than a decade later, he was in love with the enemy. All Byers ever wanted was a home, a family, and love. Susanne gave him all three. The gingham dog and the calico cat chased madly around his brain, threatening to devour each other and leave nothing but stuffing and rags. 

 

Mulder was right. Susanne was on the porch, sitting with her white robe wrapped tightly around her. She didn't move as Byers approached, nor as he stood on the steps beside her.

 

"You shouldn't be out here without a sweater," he said softly. "Even a light breeze can raise the wind chill factor, making it feel ten to twenty degrees colder and..."

 

She shivered but continued staring into the darkness as if unaware of his presence. The sky was endless, like infinity sprinkled with a dusting of stars.

 

"Susanne..."

 

"At first, I did not tell you because I could not. Do you understand?"

 

"Yes, I do."

 

"I waited for someone to come to our door," she continued in a hoarse whisper. "To say 'You are not a good wife. You are not a good mother. You do not deserve this. You are a war criminal. You will come with us.' But they never came." 

 

"Susanne, you're not a war criminal. How could you know what was being done with your research?"

 

"How could I not know?" She wrapped her arms tighter around her body. "How could I be so naïve?"

 

"I think we were all naïve." He meant that to be comforting, but it didn't end up sounding that way. "I'm sorry, Susanne. When you told me- I didn't handle it well. Please come inside. We'll talk, if you want."

 

"What is there to talk about?"

 

"Come inside. Let me try to explain."

 

She still hadn't turned her head, so Byers descended a few steps and turned so he stood in front of her, blocking her view of nothing. She was crying. The wind pushed the tears back from the corners of her eyes, defying gravity.

 

"Please." His heart beat twice before he added, "I love you."

 

She stood and let him lead her into the house. As soon as the door closed, she pressed her wet face against his neck. She shivered and sobbed silently, as though she wasn't allowed to make a sound. He put his arms around her and wished they were strong enough to shield her from the world.

 

On the sofa a few yards away, William kicked his blanket off again. The fire crackled. The wind whistled, the dog snored, and the tree branches tapped politely on the windowpanes. The October night surrounded them like a velvet cocoon, keeping the monsters at bay for a few more hours.

 

*~*~*~*

 

The overhead kitchen light seemed too bright. They turned on the light in the pantry, which spilled out on the wooden floor in pale yellow puddles. The flame under the teakettle danced liquid blue, and the kettle creaked and moaned as it came alive. Seated at the kitchen table, they spoke in hushed voices of secret things, playing connect-the-dots with a series of random numbers.

 

Byers poured Susanne the last of the red wine, trying to get her to calm down. She clutched the goblet with both hands and held rather than drank it. He sat across from her. He ran his fingertip around the rim of his teacup while he waited on the kettle.

 

"I can’t explain what I saw, but I know I saw it, Susanne," he told her, still feeling like his voice was too loud in the empty kitchen.

 

The words sounded strange coming out of his mouth after spending so long lurking in the corners of his mind. Saying them gave them flesh, made them real. Saying them made them both more and less frightening, like a nightmare by the light of day. 

 

"Eugenics was alive and well in America and Europe before World War I," he said. "We like to believe the Nazis originated the idea of racial purity and forget we've sterilized the genetically inferior since the turn of the century in the U.S., while we encouraged the genetically fit to reproduce. What the Nazis did: it's a difference in degree. We've been building better humans in the United States for fifty years."

 

Her voice was still shaky, like her hands, but she answered, "Naturally occurring, yes. Parents passing on preferred traits - that is possible. That is what Hitler did. But what you are describing, John, human-hybrids, is not possible. That is science fiction. You cannot combine human with nonhuman. Aside from blood, plasma, and minor grafts, you cannot even combine human with human. The body rejects foreign tissue."

 

"But it doesn't reject it before a child is born, does it?" he asked. "Early on, foreign tissue can be introduced and the baby incorporates it into its body."

 

That information was the product of a late night, intoxicated conversation with Frohike last year, and Byers didn’t know whether to believe it or not. If Frohike was in his cups, he had his own brand of paranoia that made Byers' ideas seem quaint.

 

"Yes," she admitted. "A fetus has no immune system. For a while, yes, I suppose a human-hybrid could be created. But once it nears term, it will reject the tissue and die."

 

"But if it didn't?" The pressure inside the teakettle begin to build. Byers fussed with his cup, spoon, and saucer, needing to put something in order. "What if, through some means, it could be brought to term? A living, human-hybrid baby?"

 

She shook her head tiredly, her forehead wrinkling. "If it was possible, the offspring would be fragile. Sterile, probably. Each time the cells reproduce, there is a chance of rejection. There would likely be auto-immune problems-"

 

"Auto-immune hemolytic anemia?"

 

"Possibly. The immune system attacking red blood cells. It is hard to speculate.  Even if we could create hybrids, why would we? Why go to such lengths to create something so delicate? From a scientific viewpoint, whatever trait the government valued, it would be easier to reproduce it through a naturally occurring mutations in humans than try to hybridize it with animal genetics."

 

"What if it wasn't animal genetics?" He leaned closer to her. "What if it was alien?" he whispered. "Alien genetics introduced into a human child?"

 

Susanne stopped toying with her wine glass. She stared at him with her eyes wide and her lips parted. She waited as if making sure she heard correctly. Byers worried his lips between his teeth and waited with her.

 

The kettle shrieked, startling them. He twisted in his chair to turn off the heat, but left the kettle on the stove and the tea leaves dry.

 

"You are serious, yes?" she asked.

 

Byers nodded. He invested long-term, couldn't tell a joke, drove a Studebaker station wagon, and defined 'casual' as a starched, short-sleeve dress shirt and tie. She teased him about being such a fuddy-duddy, but he preferred to think of himself as orderly. Well-informed. Precise. A Victorian gentleman born after his age. Regardless, 'adventure' wasn't his middle name and he wasn't given to flights of fancy.

 

"In the summer of 1947, a flying saucer crashed in Roswell, New Mexico," he explained quietly. "It was in the newspapers, though the military later said it was a weather balloon. I looked up the article. That fall, the House of Un-American Activities Committee began investigating again. HUAC. It's the perfect cover. Our government had the data from the Nazi experiments in genetics, embryology, and immunology. It had its own ongoing eugenics projects - naturally occurring, as you say. After the saucer crashed, it had alien genes and technology. Anyone who dared question their activities was branded a communist."

 

Susanne glanced at her still-full wine glass. She set it carefully on the kitchen table as if deciding she'd had enough to drink for one night.

 

"I'm not crazy, Susanne. Think about it. Think about the scientific advances we've made in less than a decade. We've discovered DNA. We’ve harnessed the atom. Broken the sound barrier. Developed the heart-lung machine that saved Mulder's life. We're not far from putting a rocket into space. Even having Nazi research to build on doesn't explain all our advances. Name any other period in history mankind has made so many leaps-"

 

A door opened. Rapid footsteps moved through the living room. Still in blue jeans and t-shirt, Mulder bounded up the dark stairs with Dana a few steps behind him. Dana’s robe fluttered after her. 

 

Byers hadn't heard Emily but Mulder must have.

 

Byers watched them tensely. He looked at the ceiling. Footsteps hurried down the hall to Katy's room. The bed squeaked as someone picked Emily up. The hallway at the top of the stairs brightened as Mulder or Dana switched on the bathroom light. A faucet turned on, running water in the bathroom sink and probably wetting a washcloth. Another nosebleed. The third of the day.

 

Mulder's and Dana's voices upstairs sounded urgent but indistinct. Byers heard Emily coughing and struggling to breathe. He waited for it to stop, like the first two nosebleeds, but the kitchen clock kept ticking away minutes.

 

No sound indicated Ana or Katy was awake, so he and Susanne sat, waiting. Dana was a nurse. Byers would be in the way. It seemed wrong to do nothing, but he could think of nothing else to do.

 

Susanne helped him watch the ceiling. "Should we call the doctor?"

 

"No," Byers answered with his chest tight. "They don't want any more doctors. She's had enough doctors."

 

In the living room, the old dog got to her feet and paced restlessly. She whined and nuzzled Will, who slept on.

 

"Is it leukemia?" Susanne sounded as powerless as Byers felt.

 

"Anemia. Auto-immune hemolytic anemia."

 

In the guestroom, Ben started crying, sounding frightened and calling for his daddy. As Byers stood, Susanne's goblet cracked. Byers froze. First a single crack, then dozens climbed the bowl in jagged lightning bolts. The delicate goblet shattered, sending bits of glass through the air and wine flowing across the tabletop. Susanne’s chair squeaked as she jumped back. Dark red liquid spattered her white robe.

 

"My God! Are you hurt?” Byers bent over her. "What happened?"

 

"I do not know. I did not touch it," she said.

 

Upstairs, he heard Emily's frightened voice and Dana trying to comfort the girl.

 

The hair on Byers' scalp bristled as the wine drip-dropped rhythmically to the floor. "Don't move,” he ordered. He put a hand on Susanne’s shoulder. “There's glass everywhere and you don't have shoes on."

 

"I did not touch it, John," Susanne insisted.

 

Ben’s cries had become wails. Heavy footsteps hurried down the stairs, and Mulder called to his younger son it was all right. Byers shivered though he didn't recall being cold. A goose walked across his grave, his grandmother would have said.

 

"John-" Susanne started shakily. “I-”

 

The bulb in the pantry exploded, raining to the floor in a tinkle of glass. The kitchen went black.

 

"Don't move," Byers repeated as he tried to figure out what was happening. His body felt like a storm rolled in. Instincts tugged at the base of his brain and awakened senses forgotten for a million years. He felt the pressure building, the air moving over his skin like a living thing. It was magical. Sensual. Beautiful, primal, frightening, and far beyond his control.

 

Upstairs, he heard four loud pops. The top of the stairs went black; the bathroom vanity had four bulbs above it. Another ‘pop’ in the guest bedroom as Mulder reached Ben. Byers heard Mulder murmuring to the baby. The crying subsided.

 

Within seconds, the house was silent again except for water running upstairs, the fireplace, and Mulder's voice soothing his infant son. Byers’ heart continued pounding. 

 

"John," Susanne said a third time, her voice small and lost in the darkness.

 

"I'm here," he answered, and tightened his hand on her shoulder.

 

Something seemed missing.

 

Byers listened. The kitchen clock had stopped ticking.

 

*~*~*~*

 

God forgive him, but once Byers understood what Mulder asked over the crackling trans-Atlantic telephone line, he thought Mulder was drinking again. Byers’ second thought was Mulder couldn't afford two ex-wives.

 

"No, not Will. Me," Mulder had repeated. "I'm getting married. Next Saturday morning. I know it's short notice, but would you come?"

 

Byers' lips moved soundlessly. He had to remind himself not to drop the telephone. Susanne stopped making lunch, held the bread knife in midair, and watched him curiously.

 

"Byers?"

 

"We'd- Susanne and I- We'd planned to be there for Will's wedding. We, we have reservations."

 

"So do I. So does everyone," Mulder quipped good-naturedly. "But that's not for two weeks. I need a best man next Saturday."

 

"And you're asking me?" Byers squeaked. "Who, wh-who, uh, who are you marrying?"

 

"Take a breath, John. You sound like a hoot owl and you're starting to hyperventilate. Who do you think I'm marrying?"

 

Byers searched his memory, trying to think of any woman Mulder had mentioned since Dana and Emily went into hiding. No one Byers recalled. Mulder even made public appearances alone, and Frohike hadn’t pushed the issue. If Mulder wasn't playing ball or in the limelight, he spent his time holed up in the Hudson Valley, two hours and a world away from Manhattan, as he put it. He put on a good show for the cameras, but the months ticked by. Dana didn’t return. Since Will's baby announcement, Byers and Frohike held their breath, waiting for the other shoe to fall.

 

"Wait, she's here." The telephone shifted and Mulder's muffled voice requested, "Say hello, honey."

 

"Hello, honey," Dana's voice said, and asked if Mulder wanted another pancake.

 

Something hit Byers' shoe, and he realized he'd let go of the receiver.  He scrambled after it, pulling it back by the cord. His hand shook as he put it to his ear again. 

 

Susanne pantomimed 'who are you talking to?'

 

Byers mouthed, “Mulder.”

 

She shook her head and resumed making sandwiches.

 

"Byers? John- Are you there?" Mulder’s voice asked.

 

"I'm, I'm here. My God. Yes, I'll be there."

 

"Great," Mulder responded. "I appreciate it. We'd appreciate it. I'll explain more once you get here, but Byers-" His voice softened. "I need you to keep it quiet, but I have someone for you to meet."

 

"W-Who?" His brain had a case of the hiccups.

 

"His name is Benjamin Adam. Ben. Isn't it, buddy?" Mulder spoke quietly and to someone close by.

 

"Who's Ben?"

 

"He's, uh, mine," Mulder answered. "He's my son."

 

"Oh my God," Byers had managed.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Susanne's broom dragged slowly, precisely across the kitchen floor, gathering slivers of glass. She got every nook and cranny, and she went over the floor and baseboards with a damp rag, making sure. Byers watched her on her hands and knees. He wanted to tell her it was the middle of the night and to do that in the morning, but kept his mouth closed. It was her way of restoring order to an upside down world. 

 

Dana sat on the swing on the front porch wrapped in Mulder's flannel shirt and staring blankly at the dark horizon. The wind ruffled her hair, blowing it around her face. Mulder stood a few feet away. He leaned back against the banister, looking at ease, but tracked everything around him with the watchful eyes of a soldier. The thousand-yard stare, they called it in the Army - when a man spent too long watching for the enemy.

 

No clock in the house still worked, but Byers supposed it must be after two. Or three. Time slipped out of alignment and into a muddled jumble of real and unreal. It was the aftermath of the witching hour and the beginning of the long, empty wait for dawn to burn away the night. It was when fevers broke and babies came and logic became disjointed.  

 

Mulder turned his head as if noticing Byers watching them. He returned inside, leaving Dana to listen to the ocean. Mulder checked on Ben and Emily, who slept in the guestroom, before he joined Byers at the living room window near the hearth.

 

"I'm sorry," Mulder said softly, words seldom passing his lips. "We never meant to- I-I thought France would be a nice change of scenery for Dana. Emily wanted to see the Eiffel Tower. We could see Will-"

     

"Don't be sorry," Byers assured him. "We want to help. This isn't quite what I'd anticipated." He looked through the window at Dana, who sat unmoving on the old swing. "Is she all right?"

 

Mulder chose his words carefully. "It's hard for her. Em being sick. Ben. As much as she loves him, he frightens her. She feels helpless and Dana doesn't like feeling helpless." 

 

"But Ben doesn't frighten you?"

 

"No, he doesn't frighten me."

 

Whatever force shattered the lightbulbs and Susanne's wine glass, it wasn't natural. Not as Byers understood Nature to be. He and Susanne had been in the kitchen, directly under Katy's bedroom, and hadn't heard Emily wake. There was no way Mulder could have heard her from the downstairs guestroom, behind a closed oak door.

 

Mulder was so intuitive it was spooky, though. And Byers recalled seeing other things happen long before Ben was born. The bathroom light in the hospital with Will - though that could have been bad wiring. And perhaps the men's room mirror was already cracked or Byers hadn't heard Mulder hit it. Even before, though- Krycek had insinuated he'd watched Mulder and Dana in bed, and a bulb in the parking garage of Frohike's building exploded. The other three men Mulder shot - Byers hadn't seen or heard them approach.

 

"Can, can you read my mind?" Byers whispered after a few false starts.

 

"No, I can't read your mind. Not like you're imagining," Mulder answered as though that was a routine question. "I can sense things, especially if the emotion or sensation is strong. Some people I can sense better than others. If I want to, I can push a thought into your mind, like I'm speaking to you. And sometimes, some people, if they want me to... Yes, I can read their mind and I can let them read mine."

 

The last log in the hearth split, sending orange sparks up the chimney, and startling Byers. On the sofa, Will shifted but didn't wake.

 

"I've read of experiments involving ESP." Byers tried to sound calm. "In the 1930's, Oxford University did a series of controlled tests with Zeener cards, and-"

 

He stopped speaking as Mulder looked at him. The fire painted Mulder’s face in stark light and shadow.

 

"You were at Oxford in the 1930's," Byers realized.

 

"He who fights with monsters should take care lest he become a monster. If you gaze too long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

 

"That's Nietzsche."

 

Mulder nodded. "Knowledge is a dangerously seductive thing, Byers. It's easy to ask questions, but ask yourself if you want them answered. You can tell yourself it was a power surge, replace the light bulbs, and go on with your life."

 

"No, I want to know," Byers heard his own voice answer unsteadily. "What was that, Mulder? What the hell are you?"

 

"I'm your friend," he answered. "My mother is a German-born Jew; my father worked for the State Department. Intelligence. I assumed she was a war bride, but it's possible their marriage was arranged. They had two children: my sister and me. When she was nine, my sister vanished. I was with her in the woods. Sam didn't run away. She wasn't kidnapped. She vanished." Mulder paused. "Girls are born with all the ova they'll ever have. Dana told me. Did you know? To pass on a male's genetics, you have to wait until puberty, but in females, the ova are present at birth. Before birth, even."

 

"You think They waited until your sister was old enough to demonstrate the same, uh, abilities you have, and took her?"

 

"I think so. Whether it was intentional or a fluke, a natural, latent gene got switched on in Samantha and me. We can pass it on. Ben has it. Will doesn't. I can't hear Will the way I can hear Ben, but Will or his son could be a carrier."

 

Byers nodded, wanting him to continue, but Mulder waited a long time before he spoke again.

 

"I was superfluous, the boy who came before the girl They wanted. Aside from keeping track of me, testing me, giving me a few nudges here and there, I don't think They gave me a second thought until I met Dana. But once They realized the opportunity, They capitalized on it."

 

He cleared his throat.

 

"I see them sometimes. In my dreams," Mulder said in a rough whisper. "Our babies. Twin girls: happy, redheaded toddlers. Safe. Loved. I see Samantha, still nine years old. She's happy, too. But sometimes I see other children. Dark-haired babies: identical boys and identical girls. Seven or eight of each. Like Samantha, but not. I feel what's inside them; it's dark, too."

 

"Do you think any of what you see is real?"

 

"Some is, but I know some of it isn't." Mulder shifted his hands on the windowsill, still watching Dana on the porch. "We're real, though." He tilted his head toward her. "She and I."

 

"If what you're saying is true, you have to-"

 

"What?" Mulder asked curtly. "I have to what? Notify the proper authorities? The death camp, Byers: do you know who granted immunity to the men who did that? Who continued their work? You know who took our first babies and left Dana to die? Who took my sister? Do you know who's behind Emily's birth? Do you know who shot me?  Who pointed a gun at Will? Do you know who those men are? They’re the proper authorities, Byers. Old Glory, apple pie, Mom, and ticker tape parades - God bless America."

 

Mulder pushed away from the window, reminding Byers of a dangerous animal confined to too small a cage.

 

"Don't tell me what I have to do. I have to protect my family. I waited forty-two years to be normal. To have one moment of what every other man has. To be able to come home at night and kiss my wife and read a story to my children before bed. Have my daughter-in-law bring my grandson over so I can stuff him full of sweets and tell him stories about when Papa was a boy. You've had that all along but I just got it, so don't tell me what I have to do, Byers."

 

As Mulder paced, the storm-coming-in feeling crept up Byers' spine again. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to presume."  

 

Mulder exhaled, and the feeling subsided. "I know. I know you didn't. It's-" He paused. "You said you wanted to know. You said you wanted to help."

 

Byers hesitated. He'd meant help in a 'babysit for the afternoon' way. The last time he blindly agreed to help Fox Mulder, he ended up an accessory to multiple murders.

 

For such a nice guy, Fox Mulder was frighteningly good at killing people.

 

"We do want to help," Susanne's voice answered. Byers turned. She stood in the doorway between the kitchen and living room. She still wore her wine-stained robe. She clutched a dishrag. Under Mulder's penetrating gaze, her shoulders hunched and she looked at the floor. "I did not mean to overhear. I was in the kitchen.” She wiped a spot on a spotless doorjamb. She lowered the dishrag, squared her shoulders, and addressed Mulder. “If John will permit it, I would like to help."

 

*~*~*~*

 

It was the last Saturday morning in May, after the full moon crested. The florists and caterers must have arrived before dawn to set up the white tent beside the river. The sun pulled the mist from the tops of the mountains and off the river. The ranch's previous owner bred racehorses. Miles of split-rail fences enclosed the fields populated by a single fat pony. An old, one-eyed cat prowled the perimeter of the house, his tail flicking as he kept watch over his domain. 

 

As Dana came to greet Byers, she smiled uncertainly, looking vulnerable. She still wore a robe, with her hair done but her face bare of makeup. She seemed paler and slimmer than he remembered, and more watchful. But she was real. Alive. Standing on Mulder's front porch steps. Mulder never wavered in his insistence Dana would return, and Byers felt traitorous for not believing him.

 

"I'm early; I'm sorry I'm so early. Eighty-two percent of commercial flights arrive at least thirty minutes late. Whoever heard of a plane landing early?" Byers said clumsily. He shook the hand Dana offered as though they met for the first time. "It's so good to see you again."

 

"It's good to see you." She took his satchel. An awkward pause followed, which Dana ended by saying, "Mulder wanted to talk with you. He's down by the boathouse."

 

The air was crisp, and the grass damp with dew, which collected on the hem of his trench coat and dotted his wingtip shoes. Under the tent, men arranged tables and chaffing dishes, while beside the river, chairs were set out for the ceremony.

 

It was a simple wedding in the middle of playing season, and therefore sandwiched between week-long road trips. No honeymoon, but no reporters, no photographers, and no one except close friends and family. No one in the press knew about the wedding, or Dana and Emily had returned, or about Ben. Mulder wanted to keep it that way as long as possible.

 

Frohike was meeting Dana's sister at North Beach Airport and driving her upstate. Langly flew into Albany, as did Agent Dales and a man who'd been an Assistant Director of the F.B.I. - hopefully, not on the same flight. According to Frohike, Mulder's mother and Dana's mother were invited, but neither would be attending.

 

Mulder lounged in a chair in the first row. He wore expensive suit trousers and a white dress shirt with the collar open. He seemed to watch the fog rolling off the river. Except for metallic squeaks as the caterers worked, and petals and fabric rustling as the florists decorated, the only sound was the water lapping against the dock.

 

"Dana won't let me have a tilt-a-whirl or a dunking booth," Mulder complained softly. He looked over as Byers approached. "Or a cotton candy machine. They rent them, you know. I think this shindig would benefit greatly from a cotton candy machine."

 

Byers looked around, trying to fathom where Mulder thought a cotton candy machine would fit into this pristine setting.

 

"I'm joking." Mulder nodded to the chair beside him. "Take a load off."

 

Byers sat down and leaned over to examine the bundle nestled in the crook of Mulder's arm. Defying all odds, a small baby slept soundly.

 

"This is Benjamin." Mulder stroked the baby's cheek. "Ben. He's four months old. It's been an eventful night, so he's taking a little nap."

 

Byers stared at the baby's peaceful face, trying to comprehend he was real. "My God, Mulder. Did you know? All this time?"

 

Mulder nodded slowly, and he smiled as Ben pursed his lips. He was a man in love.

 

Byers shook his head in disbelief. "Why didn't you say something?"

 

"It was safer not to."

 

"Did Frohike know?" Byers asked, feeling left out. "He did, didn't he?"

 

Mulder studied Ben. "Get the paperwork rolling for me to adopt Emily. Ben's birth certificate needs to be changed. My name isn't on it, and it needs to be. My will needs changed, too."

 

"I'll get someone on it right away."

 

Byers waited for further instructions, but Mulder held his new son and watched the mist skimming the silvery surface of the water.

 

"I'm getting married, Byers," he said absently. "In two hours. For better or for worse, till death us do part. Ani l'Dodi, v'Dodi li," he added in Hebrew. "The whole shebang."

 

Byers nodded, trying to be supportive. Instead of pre-wedding jitters, Mulder was in one of his odd, contemplative moods.

 

Mulder exhaled. "And to that end, I'd better finish getting dressed," He adjusted the blanket around the baby and got up.

 

Dana made her way down the path from the house, carrying two steaming mugs.  Mulder smiled at her and exchanged the baby for one of the cups. He blew the surface of the coffee to cool it.

 

"My mother called." Her voice sounded shaky as she settled Ben against her shoulder. "She's changed her mind. She's at the service station in Kingston. Bill wouldn't bring her, so she drove. From Alexandria. All night."

 

Mulder’s eyebrows rose. "Your mother can drive a car?" he asked over his mug.

 

Dana bit her lower lip. "Will left to pick up Maddie. I'm afraid to leave Emily long, and I still need to feed Ben and get ready. We'll have more people here any minute. Could you-"

 

"You want me to go meet her so she doesn't get lost?" Mulder offered gently.

 

Dana nodded again.

 

"Your mother frightens me, Scully."

 

"Lock your doors, roll up your windows, and come straight home," she advised, and turned away.

 

"We're gettin' married, honey," Mulder called after her, as though he realized it. "Third time's a charm."

 

"Don't say that too loudly," she responded over her shoulder and winked.

 

Mulder chuckled and sipped his coffee. He stepped aside to let two men unfurl a long runner between the chairs, creating an aisle ending at a small canopy - a nod to Mulder's heritage. 

 

"It would be better with a cotton candy machine and a dunking booth," Mulder said wistfully, looking around at a scene making 'picturesque' seem cliché. "but I suppose this will do."

 

"Congratulations," Byers answered, remembering his manners. "I hope you'll be very happy together."

 

That came out sounding less certain than Byers intended, but Mulder didn't seem to notice. Mulder watched Dana walk back to the house with his infant son.

 

Byers stood awkwardly, worrying he said the wrong thing. The coffee mug was warm between his hands and the steam drifted with the breeze.

 

High above the Hudson River, two bald eagles soared, watching them.

 

"These stubborn human women... It is a remarkable universe, Byers, and they make it all worthwhile," Mulder said.

 

Byers nodded. He had no idea what Mulder was talking about, but he agreed completely.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Despite the glare of the public spotlight, Mulder was a private person, as was Dana. Neither asked to be extraordinary. All they wanted was to be together, raise their family, and live their lives. Through some cruel twist of genetic fate, those were the three things they struggled hardest to do.

 

Byers and Susanne sat with Mulder at the kitchen table, listening as he explained fifty years of government conspiracy. Mulder said, beginning around the turn of the century, the U.S. and Europe attempted to create superior humans through selective breeding programs. After World War II, after Roswell, those programs shifted focus. It wasn't enough to build a better human anymore. The Russians could do that. The U.S. had the Nazi data and the alien tissue from the Roswell crash. America could create an alien-human hybrid.

 

The swing on the front porch squeaked as Dana shifted. Mulder stopped speaking momentarily.

 

He explained the first experiments after Roswell were clumsy: creating hybrid pregnancies in unsuspecting women in the military, relying on their shame to keep them silent or to force them to give their babies up for adoption. He said Emily was a product of those experiments, but didn't say Dana was never married to Emily's father. He said Alex Krycek was dead, but didn't mention the bullet that killed Krycek came from Mulder's gun.

 

Mulder said the experiments evolved, becoming more adept at blending human and alien DNA. Using vaccinations and the hunt for communism as a smokescreen, the government tracked people's genetics, monitoring those whose genes would be most compatible with alien tissue. Using them as unsuspecting test subjects. Using their tissue. Using their unborn children's tissue to further their project. Mulder never mentioned the first babies he and Dana conceived: not that Dana disappeared for three months, not that her pregnancy mysteriously ended, not that she almost died herself.

 

"These men are dangerous," Mulder said. "Above the law. They'll stop at nothing to get what they want. You need to understand."

 

Byers glanced at Susanne. "We understand."

 

Mulder chewed the inside of his lower lip. He said slowly, "Emily has a rare, auto-immune anemia. It can be treated with blood transfusions but the donor's cells have to be compatible. In Emily's case, it means being compatible with alien genetics. Not alien, per se, but able to co-exist with alien." He watched Susanne as if gauging her reaction.

 

Susanne nodded.

 

"I'm compatible, as staggering as the implications are. Emily seems to benefit from my immunities; if I have antibodies, she can use them. Muldercillin, Dana calls it. She keeps saying my body wasn't designed to produce red blood cells for two people, but I've always been healthy and right now, I'm fine. Emily's getting better. But I'm the only one we're sure she's compatible with, and we discovered by dumb luck. If something would happen to me or if it becomes too dangerous for Dana, Ben, and Emily to stay with me... We need a plan B, if there is one. A way to slow the anemia. A way for her to be compatible with another donor. A way to find another donor. We don't even know what in my blood makes me a match."

 

Susanne nodded again.

 

"I know what I'm asking for is a medical needle in a haystack," Mulder said, speaking solely to Susanne. "We've had the best doctors in the world tell us it isn't possible: there is no cure, and the treatment they offer makes her sicker than the anemia." He opened and closed his mouth several times. "I'm not ready to accept that. The science at Johns Hopkins and Children's Hospital isn't the same science that created this child, and it isn't the science that's going to make her better. You knew those men; you've seen their science." Mulder’s eyes seeming to scan her soul. This time Byers sensed no accusation, but calm appraisal and a statement of fact.

 

"Yes," she said, barely audible.

 

"I can get you access to whatever equipment or information you need," Mulder offered. "Blood samples, medical records - whatever you need."

 

She nodded.

 

"Do you think you can help?" he asked hesitantly.

 

"I'm not sure. I can try," she said softly.

 

"Thank you." Mulder took a deep breath and got up. He rolled his neck and shoulders tiredly. "We can talk later. I should get my wife off the porch before she turns into a Scully-cicle."

 

As Mulder reached the doorway to the living room, he turned back. He braced his hands on the doorjamb. "If you discover there isn't a plan B-" He seemed to weigh his words. "-I don't want Dana to know. If you can’t help, I don't want her to know about any of this. Ever."

 

Susanne nodded again.

 

*~*~*~*

 

Byers didn't recall Mulder wearing reading glasses, but Dana noticed him squinting at the photo and handed him a pair from the pocket of the gray flannel shirt she'd borrowed. Mulder put them on and tilted the picture of Maddie and her belly to see it in the dim light.

 

"Did you look like this?" Mulder glanced up at Dana. "With Ben? This big?"

 

"Bigger." Dana toyed with Mulder’s hair as he sat on the ottoman beside the sofa. "This is her first baby, and she was still at the cute stage when I took these. Give her two more weeks."

 

Mulder looked at the picture again as if trying to fathom that. Eventually, he put it back on the coffee table and jostled Will's shoulder gently.

 

"Aren't you supposed to report for roll call, baby boy?" Mulder asked. "Time to get up."

 

"...don't have school today," Will answered without moving his lips or opening is eyes.

 

"William, come on. Gotta get up."

 

"Dad?" Will grimaced unhappily "...time is it?"

 

"Almost morning. After five. You need to get back to the base."

 

"Shit. Five isn't morning. Write me a note, Daddy-O." He burrowed deeper under his blanket. "We'll call it an excused absence."

 

"Unfortunately, the Air Force will call it AWOL. Get up, go shower, and I'll see about coffee."

 

Will squinted at his father like a pampered pet denied his place at the foot of the bed and started to go back to sleep.

 

"AWOL. Summary court-martial. Military jail, William," Mulder reiterated. "A note from Daddy-O won't cut it anymore."

 

Will grumbled unintelligibly and got to his feet, yawning and stumbling through the darkness toward the downstairs bathroom. After some slamming and cursing, a faucet turned on, and the showerhead. Water splashed against the tiles. Mulder remained on the ottoman.

 

"Did you talk to him?" Dana asked with her back to Byers.

 

"We talked at the beach this afternoon." Mulder rested his head against her thigh and looked up at her as she stood beside him. "He loves Maddie but he's so young. He's scared. Maybe I shouldn't have let them get married. Maybe I..."

 

Mulder sighed, pulled off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes.

 

"He made his decision. You can't live his life for him," she reminded him.

 

"I want him to be happy. That's what I want for all of us: to be healthy, happy, and safe. I don't think that's so unreasonable."

 

"Neither do I, but I think your cape's threadbare tonight." She ran her fingers through his hair again. "Saving the world may have to wait a few hours while you get some sleep, Superman."

 

Mulder rubbed his jaw against the fabric of her pajamas, making a rough, scratchy sound as stubble slid against cotton.

 

"Not the whole world tonight: a select minority. Saving the whole world is a larger, long-term goal." He turned his head, looking past her and at the last of night outside the window. "It's almost full: the moon. We'll have a full moon for Halloween," he said thoughtfully.

 

"Again."

 

"Three years, Nurse Scully," he said in some pre-dawn shorthand exclusive to the two of them. "A hundred lifetimes squeezed into 1,095 days. One hundred and fifty-six Saturday afternoons. Would you do it all again, if you had the choice?"

 

"You know I would, Mr. Marty Martin," she answered, and stroked his cheek as he leaned against her.

 

"I know. I like to hear you say it." He nuzzled her thigh again, and deadpanned, "Are you wearin' lead panties?"

 

Dana nodded, and Byers heard her laugh softly. 

 

A hollow place inside him envied the sound. Mulder and Dana had forgotten Byers was there and, in a few seconds stolen between everyday worries and global conspiracies, gotten lost in each other. Their world was the two of them. In the vast, hungry darkness of the universe, two souls found an oasis.

 

Dana trailed her finger down the outline of Mulder's neck and underneath his t-shirt, stroking the top of the scar bisecting his chest. “A love line,” Byers heard Dana call it on another occasion he accidentally intruded. 

 

Byers turned silently and, for lack of anywhere else to go, returned to the kitchen. Susanne stood at the stove, cooking nothing. Unfinished conversations hung in the air. The silence from the living room was comfortable, but in the kitchen it felt strained, like catgut strings over a guitar's frets.

 

"William's awake. He needs to get back to the base," he said, his voice sounding foreign to him. "He'd like coffee."

 

Susanne nodded and started the mundane process of making coffee, seeming relieved to have a direction. After plugging in their seldom-used percolator, she supervised the creaks and rumbles as the metal pot heated.

 

"Susanne-" Byers wasn’t sure how he planned to finish his sentence. 

 

"Do you want tea?" she asked.

 

"No. I-I can drink coffee. Later. I don't want anything right now."

 

She nodded and went back to watching the percolator.   

 

"Susanne-"

 

"I should make breakfast for him." She spoke rapidly as she reached for a skillet. "I should make breakfast for everyone. An American breakfast: pancakes and eggs and-"

 

"I don't think anyone's hungry this early."

 

She stopped with her hand poised over the knob to turn on the burner. Her shoulders slouched tiredly, and her head tilted down, as if exposing her neck for the executioner's ax.

 

"Do you think you can help Emily?" he asked, and she turned, looking ethereally pale. "Or were you being polite?"

 

"I don't know," she answered in lost whisper. "With blood samples, the right equipment, and enough time, I should be able to discover what makes Emily and Mr. Mulder compatible, so at least they could search for another donor. Beyond that, I am not sure."

 

It was Byers' turn to nod.

 

"To find that, though: the precise link between humans and aliens... If I find it, these men you and Mr. Mulder speak of - they would kill for that knowledge, John."

 

"You don't owe them anything, Susanne. If you think it's too dangerous, all you have to do it say 'no'."

 

She looked past his left shoulder, not focusing on anything behind him as much as avoiding everything in front of her. "How can I say 'no'? Emily could be our daughter."

 

"Could she?" he asked hoarsely. 

 

He'd never questioned her about Ana and Katy, and he'd never had any reason to. At the raw edge of spring 1945, after the Allies routed the Nazis from France, he'd finagled a pass and met Susanne in Paris for twenty-four giddy hours. They wrote copious letters and talked by telephone if he could get to one, but Paris was the first time they'd seen each other since they married. She shown him the Left Bank that afternoon, the Eiffel Tower that evening, and nine months afterward that night, they become the parents of twin girls.

 

His beautiful, bright, tall, blonde-haired, blue-eyed daughters - he wanted desperately to believe the timeline didn't fit. According to her story, Susanne left Germany several years earlier. There was no tampering with her pregnancy, no ulterior motive to her marrying him. Two lonely, frightened people had found each other and fallen in love in the middle of a war.

 

She wasn't cruising Wiltshire, looking for Mr. Gullible Good Genes and his American citizenship.

 

He wanted to be her Superman.

 

"Susanne?" he said, his voice rising an octave.

 

"John, no. Do not even think that. I mean she is an innocent little girl."

 

She hung the skillet back on the pot rack. Susanne lifted the pan with both hands as though it had grown heavier, and she had trouble securing it on the hook.

 

"Is 'Susanne Modeski' even your real name?" He worried his wedding band with his thumb.

 

'Modeski' wasn't a Hebrew surname, but he assumed her family adopted it as an Anglicized version of 'Moidecki' or 'Moidezki,' while 'Susanne' was the German equivalent of 'Susannah.' Her mother called her 'Nan,' which Byers thought was a diminutive from childhood.

 

It was also, between Hebrew, Polish, and Yiddish, 'Grace,' 'Ann,' and 'Nancy.'

 

The papers allowing Susanne to flee Germany were forgeries, and any earlier documents had been destroyed. The crumbling Nazi regime burned birth records, attempting to conceal the genocide of the Jews as well as the Lebensborn project: a quarter-million 'racially pure' children either born to unmarried Aryan women and SS officers and given to the government to raise, or kidnapped from occupied countries. Many immigrants - Jewish and Aryan - arrived on Allied soil with their fake passports and the clothes on their back. Those immigrants were, for lack of any evidence otherwise, whoever they said they were. It was possible, even likely, she bought a passport on the Moroccan black market in 1943, became 'Susanne Modeski,' and the woman she'd been before ceased to exist.

 

"I cannot imagine being anyone but your Susanne," she said.

 

"You didn't answer me."

 

"John, I-" Her voice broke.

 

He tried to say something but he felt bone-weary, numb, and stretched tissue thin. His eyes burned, his temples pounded, and his shoulders ached from the weight of the world.

 

He married a beautiful stranger, lived with her, loved her, and raised children with her, to realize she remained as much a stranger as the day they'd met.

 

He needed a fact to quote. He liked facts and figures, but the only related one he could think of was almost six million Jews died in the death camps, and only twenty-one Nazi scientists were ever brought to justice in a court of law.

 

Byers wondered, as his tired mind began to drift past the edge of reason, if her German lover was one of the men tried at Nuremburg. The trial was late November 1945, right after the war and before Katy and Ana were born. Byers hadn't owned a television, but the window of the appliance store near their first apartment had one. He remembered stopping with Susanne, who was well into her seventh month of pregnancy, to catch a glimpse of the tiny, flickering screen one Saturday morning. There was a crowd, so he'd waited on the curb and held their umbrella. She watched for several minutes, huddled under a leaky awning in her too-tight winter coat. She turned away, took his hand, and walked on. She hadn't looked back.

 

"I doubt La Sorbonne has the laboratory equipment I will need, but I am sure Oxford does." She avoided looking at him as she spoke. "I could go there. It is not so far away. Across The Channel. I could come home, sometimes."

 

At 'sometimes,' his head popped up and tilted to one side. He envisioned her working on this research while the girls were at school. There might be trips to universities for the labs or libraries, but not extended stays. He wanted to help Mulder, but not if it meant having his wife and Katy and Ana's mother away for weeks at a time.

 

"What do you mean 'sometimes'?"

 

"I-I mean I could- I could see the girls? Yes?" she asked, looking at him from underneath her eyebrows, her blue eyes pleading. "Sometimes?"

 

He stepped forward, closing the gap between them. "I don't want you to leave. Is that what you think?"

 

She nodded miserably.

 

"You're my wife, Susanne. The mother of my children. All I want is for you to tell me the truth." He paused. "Whatever that truth is."

 

"I told you the truth!" she responded loudly, her lower lip trembling. "You do not believe me! You think I am a Nazi harlot! I killed my own people! I have my old research notes. In the attic. They are packed between the boxes of summer clothes and the second-hand law books from your first office. Do you want to see them, John? See what I did? Your wife? Mother of your children? I have all the numbers. Twin studies: mortality rate of ninety-three percent. Xeno-transplantation: mortality rate of ninety-nine-"

 

"Stop it! Please."

 

Her face crumpled. She wrapped her arms around her body, struggling not to cry.

 

He braced one hand on the stove beside her and, without touching her, looked down at the spotlessly clean floor. "I believe you. I-I need some time to, to think. To sort this out. All of it. You. Ben. All of this."

 

"I am sorry," she managed.

 

"So am I."

 

"How can you possibly want me here?" she asked in a ragged voice.

 

"How can I possibly not?" His words bypassed his overworked brain and came straight from his soul.

 

She lost her battle against tears and started to sob, covering her face with one hand.

 

Without raising his head, he slipped his hand into hers, toying with her cold fingers. "Ani l'Dodi-" he started, his voice creaking like a rusted hinge. "Ani l'Dodi, v'Dodi li."

 

It was one of two Hebrew phrases she'd taught him. 'I am my Beloved's, and my Beloved is mine.'

 

She inhaled shakily, rested her head and one wet, white knuckled fist against his chest, and stood motionless for a long time. Eventually, as the night began to fray at the edges, his heart slowed beneath her hand, thudding dully instead of pounding in his ears. Her fingers unclenched and he closed his eyes. 

 

"Ani ohevet otcha," she whispered hoarsely. She leaned against his chest as though it would open and she could crawl inside and never come out again.

 

"I know. I love you, too. I do." He put his arm around her, stroking the silky back of her robe.

 

Behind him, a man cleared his throat apologetically.

 

Byers exhaled and stepped back, expecting Mulder, but it was Will who asked, "Am I interrupting?"

 

Byers said, "No," as Susanne moved away, wiping her eyes. She opened the cupboard to get Will a mug. "Please sit down. I think the coffee's ready."

 

"I was looking for my dad. Or Dana. Dad woke me but he's not in the living room or their bedroom."

 

Byers massaged his forehead. "I think they may be otherwise occupied."

 

"Occupied?" Will said skeptically, buttoning his uniform shirt. He paused to yawn and stretch. "No, they're not. I was in the shower."

 

Susanne salvaged the conversation by handing Will a cup of hot coffee and asking if he wanted sugar.

 

"Lots of it. Why is everyone awake? And dressed?" he asked, seeming to notice the dress shirt and slacks Byers had worn since the previous day.

 

Susanne kept her head down, fiddling with the fabric belt of her stained robe. 

 

"We were talking."

 

Will looked unconvinced, but shifted his attention to spooning half of the sugar bowl into his coffee cup. He left a sprinkle of sugar across the counter, as well. He stirred his coffee with the sugar spoon, thought a moment, and asked, "May I use your telephone?"

 

"Of course," Byers answered. "Do you want me to put the call through for you?"

 

Will shook his head 'no,' and reached for the receiver as he took his first sip of coffee. To Byers' surprise, Will had no trouble conversing with the operator in French. William waited, yawning again and licking off his spoon, while he was routed through to the switchboard in Kingston, New York. It was an hour before dawn in France, but mid-day on the U.S. East Coast.

 

"Bonjour, Madelon," Will said in a husky whisper making Byers want to guard his daughters with a shotgun. "Comment ca va?" There was a pause and a grin. "Yes, I know. Dana showed me the photographs. You're huge. What are you going to have? An elephant?"

 

To Byers, the years peeled away. He remembered watching Mulder on the telephone during the war, and Will unknowingly mimicked his father's posture perfectly. If there was a lull in the fighting, Mulder was on a pay telephone trying to get through to his wife and baby boy. Byers was in line behind Mulder, sitting on his field radio and waiting for a chance to talk to Susanne.

 

Spring 1944 to autumn 1956. More than twelve and a half years. Six hundred and fifty-four Saturdays.

 

Will listened to whatever Maddie was saying. He ducked his head and responded softly, "I know. I miss you. Je t'aime aussi. So much, honey."

 

The sky outside the kitchen window was black but the stars had begun their slow slide toward morning. In the distance, lights twinkled in their neighbors' kitchens and barns: dairymen who milked by lantern light and fishermen making their way to the dock, as they had for the last thousand years. Dawn would come soon, opening her rational eyes and pushing back the fairy magic of the night. In a few hours, the girls would get up and life would go on. The same, but not.

 

Yawning, Byers slid his hand down Susanne's sleeve and over her wrist and fingertips as he left the kitchen. In the living room, the dog yawned and raised her gray muzzle. Her tail thwapped hopefully against the stone hearth. Mulder must have rebuilt the fire, because flames licked their way over the logs and warmed the old walls. 

 

As he started toward his bedroom, Byers noticed Mulder's and Dana's door was open, revealing nothing on their rumpled bed except Emily and Ben. He lingered in the doorway, studying them. They slept like all children: cuddled together, safe, innocent, and certain one cry would bring their parents swooping in to chase away the boogieman. Except, for Emily and Ben, the nightmare boogiemen in the shadows were real.

 

He patted the dog's head absently as she came up beside him. He turned, looking around his living room as if it might appear differently than it had the previous evening. Will turned on the radio, and The Five Satins crooned the opening notes of “In the Still of the Night.” The song was number twenty-four on the chart that week, according to the French announcer. The breeze picked up, whistling under the sash and making the white curtains billow.

 

The dog sighed and lay down outside the guestroom, watching the front door. She kept one ear cocked sideways, listening for Emily and Ben.

 

A board creaked outside. Byers went to the window, thinking a stray animal was on the porch. Instead, back-lit by the distant yellow moon, he saw Mulder and Dana dancing slowly. Mulder had his old gray shirt back. With his hands around Dana's waist, he stroked the skin beneath her robe and simple blue pajamas. She tilted her face upward, tiptoeing and parting her lips as he kissed her softly, reverently. As the silhouette of their faces separated, she rested her head against his chest and they resumed dancing.

 

Byers doubted they could hear the radio, but it didn't seem to matter.

 

"John?" Susanne asked hesitantly. Byers turned, noticing her across the room, spatula in hand. "I thought you were going to bed. Did you change your mind?  About breakfast?"

 

She wanted to fix breakfast for him far more than Byers wanted to eat it.

 

"Or I could make tea," she offered.

 

"Tea," he conceded, and followed her back to the kitchen.

 

Will had pulled a chair away from the kitchen table, and straddled it backward as he cradled the telephone against his shoulder. He was on his second cup of coffee, and discussing baby names in a rapid jumble of French and American slang. It was a fruitless conversation. Mulder said the baby was a boy and would be named Luc. Byers wasn't sure how Mulder knew, but he'd lay odds Mulder was right.

 

Susanne turned on the burner under the kettle with a blue whoosh, and set an empty mug on the table in front of Byers.

 

"Did you know the beverage we know as 'tea' is virtually unchanged from what Emperor Shen-Nung discovered in 2737 B.C.?" Byers asked. He looked up at Susanne. "According to Chinese legend, the breeze blew some dried tea leaves into a kettle of boiling water. The Emperor tasted the resulting brew and soon tea-"

 

She smiled, looking tiredly bemused. "My John," she whispered, ruffling his hair.

 

He pushed his eyebrows together in what Mulder called his 'puzzled puppy dog' expression. "You don't want to hear the rest of the story?"

 

"Of course I do," she assured him. "Tell me the rest of it."

 

Outside, on the porch, in the darkness, another board squeaked.

 

Byers cleared his throat and smoothed his hair into place as she turned away, reaching for the tea bags.

 

*~*~*~*

 

End: A Moment in the Sun: Normandy

 

End: A Moment in the Sun.


End file.
